GetEvent was an endurance sport calendar and registration site. Event directors added their events to the calendar and could include a customizable registration system for them.

The calendar needed to include as many events as possible to be a desirable destination for users, and simple searching and geolocation had to exist to make it usable.

I built a RESTful API with PHP/CodeIgniter to serve a JavaScript module that used free IP-lookup geolocation services. The module made an AJAX request for a specified radius from the result of the geolocation lookup; if the service failed, it fell back gracefully to a date-based query. The API returned JSON and templating was handled with Handlebars. Infinite scrolling and a responsive design made the search usable and elegant.

Code sample: github.com/flatironic/Samples — /event-search

Any event director could add their own events. An import tool also targeted affiliate event registration sites and populated the database with API results combined with scraped data, creating event pages that linked back to those registration sites. The affiliate relationship earned GetEvent a small percentage of the registration fee.

The result was a usable, responsive design on a scalable infrastructure, with the import tool automatically adding thousands of events that could be updated as needed.