ruby script/plugin install http://opensvn.csie.org/calendariffic/calendariffic/

1. Identify the .rhtml file that will display the Calendariffic calendar. Let's say this file is called *myrailsview*.*rhtml*.

2. You then need to include links to 3 Dynarch calendar javascript files which the plugin has installed in your PUBLIC/javascripts/calendariffic directory. These 3 files are called 'calendar.js', 'calendar-setup.js', and 'calendar-en.js'. The easiest way to do this is to use the rails function *javascript_include_tag*.
e.g. your myrailsview.rhtml file might have this in the section:

    <%= javascript_include_tag 'calendariffic/calendar.js', 'calendariffic/calendar-setup.js', 'calendariffic/lang/calendar-en.js' %>
    

Some things to note:
The Calendariffic file, calendar-setup.js, is a slightly modified version of Dynarch's calendar-setup.js file.
Specifically, it has 1 more function (called set_cal()) that is used to facilitate calendar creation.
So don't try replacing Calendariffic's calendar-setup.js file with the equivalently-named Dynarch file.

The calendar-en.js file is located in a subdirectory named 'lang'.
The calendar-en.js file sets the language associated with the calendar to ENGLISH.
There are MANY different language-specific javascript files located in the lang directory, so you can choose whichever is suitable for you.

You MUST include the relative path to each of the 3 javascript files in your javascript_include_tag function
(i.e. don't just write

            javascript_include_tag 'calendar.js'
        

instead, write

            javascript_include_tag 'calendariffic/calendar.js'
        

3. To specify the look-and-feel of your calendar pop-up, you now need to include a link to your favorite Dynarch calendar css file.

There are 10 different looks-and-feels to the standard Dynarch pop-up calendar and they are located within the rails directory public/stylesheets/calendariffic

The standard method to reference 1 of these .css files in your .rhtml file is to add something like this to your tag:

	<%= stylesheet_link_tag 'calendariffic/calendar-win2k-cold-1.css' %>
  

4. Here's where you add the DHTML calendar. Add this (or something similar) to the portion of your .rhtml file
at the point where you want your pop-up calendar to appear:
for example

            <%= calendariffic_input(false, 'start_date', 'calendariffic/date.png', 'start_cal', '%m/%d/%y', nil, {:class => 'myfavoriteclass', :readonly => 'true'}, {:class => 'borderless'}) %>
        

will yield the following HTML

		< input type="text" name="start_date" id="start_date", value="" readonly="true" class="myfavoriteclass" />< img src="calendariffic/date.png" name="start_cal" id="start_cal" class="borderless" />< script language="javascript">set_cal('start_date', 'start_cal', '%m/%d/%y');< /script>
    

Details of the syntax for the calendariffic_input function are given in the rdoc.
Note that you MUST supply a value for text_name and a different value for image_name for the pop-up calendar to work

5. Once you've added your calendariffic_input function to your .rhtml file, you're done.
You now have a calendar icon that can be clicked on to pop-up a calendar widget.
Once you select a date from the calendar widget, it will be displayed in your custom build text-box.

There is currently no advanced documentation for this plugin.