The thoughtful giving of gifts made easy!
The free website,  Circle of Gifts offers a solution.  Shawn DeArmond  made and  uses it  with his family.
Perhaps Circle of Gifts  can help you. Try it out and see!
I did find some  basic terms such as “CLAIM”  and BOUGHT” confusing.  Nothing is actually bought. There is a link to Amazon where you can purchase items.Â
Instead of CLAIM and BOUGHT, As a psychologist  I would  prefer language  such as :  “ I’D LIKE  GIFT X“ and  “OK! WISH  HEARD!”
I do plan to try out Circle of Gifts as it is a  thoughtful way of giving gifts.  Isn’t that what real giving is all about?  Thoughtfulness?
written by licensed psychologist  DrCameronJackson@gmail.com
                            for  the Circle of Gifts web site,  go to: http://circleofgifts.com/
written by Shwn DeArmond who started Circle of Gifts: Â
“This  past week, I launched a cool new web site on Drupal. It’s called Circle of Gifts, and it’s a tool to help families and friends make their holiday shopping easier. Users build their wish list on the site, and their Friends “claim” items so others know not to buy that gift. I originally built it for my family, but have since expanded it and it’s now open to the public. There were a lot of moving parts and a lot of challenges to overcome in building a social network on Drupal. Let’s look at some of them:
Claiming Gifts
| Claimed | Bought | Don’t Want | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flag link |  |
 |
 |
| Flag link description | Click to claim | Click to mark this gift as bought. | Remove this item from my gift list |
| Flagged message | You have claimed this gift. | You have bought this gift. | You no longer want this item |
| Flag unlink |  |
 |
 |
| Flag unlink description | Click to release your claim on this gift. | Click to mark this gift as not bought | Add this item back to my gift list. |
| Unflagged message | This gift can now be claimed. | This gift is not bought. | This item is now back in my gift list. |
The trouble with flag link text is that it is simultaneously trying to display current state and an action. By making the links buttons, it is moving towards being an action as opposed to a state. “Claim” and “Release” icons work pretty well, as do the “Remove” and “Add Back”. But I’m still not thrilled about “Bought” and “Not Bought”, as the text is not an action word, but rather a state. The problem is that the act of actually purchasing the gift is outside the control of the site. It just links to Amazon. This is just checking it off your Shopping List. I’m still working on that one.
Birthday Views
/** * Implements hook_views_query_alter(). */ function mymodule_views_query_alter(&$view, &$query){ if ($view->name == 'mymodule_birthdays') { foreach ($query->orderby as $key => $sort) { $newkey = $key + 2; $query->orderby[$newkey] = $sort; } $query->orderby[0]['field'] = "ISNULL(field_data_field_mymodule_birthday_field_mymodule_birt)"; $query->orderby[0]['direction'] = "ASC"; $query->orderby[1]['field'] = "((DAYOFYEAR(field_data_field_mymodule_birthday_field_mymodule_birt) - DAYOFYEAR(NOW()) + 365 ) % 365)"; $query->orderby[1]['direction'] = "ASC"; } }Take a look at your query to see what it’s labeling the birthday field. The first $query->orderby looks to see if the field is empty, and puts the empty ones at the end. The second $query->orderby takes the day of the year of the birthday, subtracts the day of the year of today, adds 365 so we won’t have any negatives, and then finds the remainder when dividing by 365. Totally works. Yay math! (Some math wiz wanna tell me what’s going to happen in 2016 for leap year? Sorta wondering.) Circle of Gifts had plenty more obstacles that were overcome, but I finally launched it. I invite you to create an account, poke around, and maybe it’ll be useful to you like it is for my family.
