In this episode, we're tackling how to lock unavailable dates in our calendar based on the user's current availability. The adventure begins by hooking into the easePick
calendar plugin, which thankfully has a built-in date-locking feature. This helps us prevent users from clicking on unavailable or past dates (because no one wants to book an appointment in the past!).
We first set up the lock plugin with some basic options, like making today the minimum date someone can book. Then, we check out how to customize the filtering so that dates without available slots can't be picked. To make this work, we need to organize our availability data just right. That means crafting a super simple JSON structure with only the date, slots, and relevant employee information—stripping away any data we don't really need. There's a little detour where we debug and clean up issues around missing employees and empty slots, eventually landing on a clean, predictable format.
Once we've transformed our data to the right shape (using a handy transformer class), we pass that directly into our date picker. With that in place, our calendar now grays out and prevents selection for any unavailable days. We do a bit of testing to make sure employees' unique schedules get reflected correctly—if Alex works Saturdays but not Sundays, for example, you’ll see that immediately update in the calendar when you select Alex.
By the end, our calendar is smart enough to only show selectable dates that genuinely have availability for whoever you pick. It's a bit of a journey with some custom code, but from here, things only get easier as we've built up the groundwork for a robust availability picker!