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Find a Calendar Event: Searching by Keyword — Automation For Beginners

Day 11 · ~12 min●

Your calendar has events for this week — standups, reviews, one-on-ones. You want the first event that matches a keyword like review. How would the search call look?

Same toolset.execute_action skeleton? Pass a query in the params dict, get a list back, grab the first item?

Exactly right. The action is GOOGLECALENDAR_FIND_EVENT, the query goes in as {"query": "review"}, and the response puts matching events under items. Pull the first one or fall back to an empty dict if nothing matches:

python

result = toolset.execute_action(Action.GOOGLECALENDAR_FIND_EVENT, {"query": "review"})
events = result.get("items", [])
first = events[0] if events else {}

That ternary — events[0] if events else {} — reads like "give me the first one if there are any, otherwise give me an empty dict"?

Exactly. It's the one-line version of the early return pattern. Compact and safe — no IndexError, caller always gets a dict:

python

def find_event(query: str) -> dict:
    result = toolset.execute_action(Action.GOOGLECALENDAR_FIND_EVENT, {"query": query})
    events = result.get("items", [])
    return events[0] if events else {}

An empty dict instead of None? Why not None?

Matching the return type makes the caller's life easier. If you always return a dict, the caller can safely do .get("summary", "") without checking for None first. Same-shape returns beat mixed-type returns every time.

So every caller of find_event can just read .get("summary") or .get("start") and trust it will not crash — whether the query matched or not?

That is the whole point of returning a safe shape. Your function is a stable building block now. Week 3 will stack several of these together, and the guarantees you put in today let tomorrow's code stay simple.

Ternary for Safe First-Element

TL;DR: events[0] if events else {} grabs the first item or a safe default in one line.

Action — Action.GOOGLECALENDAR_FIND_EVENT
Params — {"query": "review"}
Response — {"items": [...]}
Return shape — always a dict, empty on no match

Why match the type on every path

Return shape	Caller code
`dict` or `None`	needs `if result is not None` check
`dict` always	`result.get("summary", "")` just works

Day 11 · ~12 min●

Your calendar has events for this week — standups, reviews, one-on-ones. You want the first event that matches a keyword like review. How would the search call look?

Same toolset.execute_action skeleton? Pass a query in the params dict, get a list back, grab the first item?

python

result = toolset.execute_action(Action.GOOGLECALENDAR_FIND_EVENT, {"query": "review"})
events = result.get("items", [])
first = events[0] if events else {}

That ternary — events[0] if events else {} — reads like "give me the first one if there are any, otherwise give me an empty dict"?

Exactly. It's the one-line version of the early return pattern. Compact and safe — no IndexError, caller always gets a dict:

python

def find_event(query: str) -> dict:
    result = toolset.execute_action(Action.GOOGLECALENDAR_FIND_EVENT, {"query": query})
    events = result.get("items", [])
    return events[0] if events else {}

An empty dict instead of None? Why not None?

So every caller of find_event can just read .get("summary") or .get("start") and trust it will not crash — whether the query matched or not?

Ternary for Safe First-Element

TL;DR: events[0] if events else {} grabs the first item or a safe default in one line.

Action — Action.GOOGLECALENDAR_FIND_EVENT
Params — {"query": "review"}
Response — {"items": [...]}
Return shape — always a dict, empty on no match

Why match the type on every path

Return shape	Caller code
`dict` or `None`	needs `if result is not None` check
`dict` always	`result.get("summary", "")` just works

Ternary for Safe First-Element

TL;DR: events[0] if events else {} grabs the first item or a safe default in one line.

Action — Action.GOOGLECALENDAR_FIND_EVENT

Params — {"query": "review"}

Response — {"items": [...]}

Return shape — always a dict, empty on no match

Why match the type on every path

Return shape	Caller code
`dict` or `None`	needs `if result is not None` check
`dict` always	`result.get("summary", "")` just works

Ternary for Safe First-Element

TL;DR: events[0] if events else {} grabs the first item or a safe default in one line.

Action — Action.GOOGLECALENDAR_FIND_EVENT

Params — {"query": "review"}

Response — {"items": [...]}

Return shape — always a dict, empty on no match

Why match the type on every path

Return shape	Caller code
`dict` or `None`	needs `if result is not None` check
`dict` always	`result.get("summary", "")` just works

Ternary for Safe First-Element

Why match the type on every path

Ternary for Safe First-Element

Why match the type on every path

Ternary for Safe First-Element

Why match the type on every path

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Ternary for Safe First-Element

Why match the type on every path

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