Comments on: Talking with Doug Day about the iCalendar validator

By: Dean Sanvitale

Dean Sanvitale — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 09:10:08 +0000

I’m Dean. What’s the issue? I’ve only used feed2ical with Apple iCal and Outlook 2007 so I haven’t run into the gcal issue. BTW feed2ical source code is here:

http://feed2.ical.appspot.com/static/feed2ical.zip

It was a quick hack based on an older quicker hack in PHP I wrote in 2002, which is turn was based on http://www.aaronsw.com/2002/rss2ical.py. It probably has many bugs. If there is an obvious issue I can fix it quickly. Given the inexact nature of dates and RSS, I’m amazed that the site gets around 6000 hits daily from around the world.

By: Quentin

Quentin — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 01:53:10 +0000

THanks much. I’ll give it a shot. Was hoping to find Dean Sanvitale’s email address somewhere so I could ask him as well, but he seems to have a good job not leaving it posted anywhere. Thanks again.

-Q.

By: Jon Udell

Jon Udell — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 14:35:00 +0000

In that RSS feed the only date info is in the description element. It looks like feed2ical takes date info from the pubDate element. Maybe you could at least get him to echo the start datetime into pubDate? That might be enough.

By: Quentin

Quentin — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 10:55:45 +0000

Hi,

Here’s an RSS feed in the wild that I think has the problem you mention (DTSTART and DTEND missing).

http://www.gordonschool.org/IS_RSSFeed.aspx?feedtype=pagecalendar&feedrelationid=606352&eventscategoriesids=23,19,45,49,80,81,64,82,73,74,83,86,76,72,75,84,85,77,58,62,63,56,69,70,71,46,79,78,50,51,52,53,60,65,66,67,68,47,57,54,48,55,39,40,26,41,22&eventsstartdate=1/31/2011&eventsenddate=7/1/2012

At least when I run it through feed2ical, that is what I get:

BEGIN:VEVENT
UID:http://www.gordonschool.org/calendar
DTSTAMP;VALUE=DATE:
URL;VALUE=URI:http://www.gordonschool.org/calendar
SUMMARY:Committee Meeting
DESCRIPTION:Mon\, 31 Jan 2011 13:00:00 GMT – Mon\, 31 Jan 2011 05:00:00 GMT\N
DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:
DTEND;VALUE=DATE:
END:VEVENT

So as an end user (not programmer), who just wants to get a calendar into google calendar, what do I do? I can find the guy who maintains the website, but what should I tell him: “Please specify the start and end dates in your database/application that creates the feed?”

Thanks for any help (From anyone!).

–Q.

By: The iCalendar chicken-and-egg conundrum | mobilei.tk

The iCalendar chicken-and-egg conundrum | mobilei.tk — Sat, 13 Nov 2010 07:29:15 +0000

[...] Doug thought there should be a validator for iCalendar feeds, so he stepped up to the plate and created one at [...]

By: Dean Sanvitale

Dean Sanvitale — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 21:33:47 +0000

I used RFC2445 when writing http://feed2ical.appspot.com. I will let you subscribe to feeds in iCal, Outlook 2007, etc.

webcal://feed2ical.appspot.com/convert?url=http%3A%2F%2Fblog.jonudell.net%2Ffeed

By: Jon Udell

Jon Udell — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 15:37:21 +0000

You’re right. I’ve been saying and writing 2445 for so long it’s hard to break the habit. But as of Sept 2009, it’s 5545.

It’s like writing 2010 for the first time, after writing 2009 so many times. Hard to make the shift!

By: Egon Frerich

Egon Frerich — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 15:04:44 +0000

RFC2445 is obsolete should be RFC 5545

By: Marcyes / Talking with Doug Day about the iCalendar validator « Jon Udell

Marcyes / Talking with Doug Day about the iCalendar validator « Jon Udell — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 23:23:57 +0000

[...] Talking with Doug Day about the iCalendar validator « Jon Udell Any push to standardize iCalendar is good in my book, also check out this post (and the whole blog) for more calendar standardization/validation discussion. [via twitter.com ] [ programming, discussion, calendar, validation, dates ] permalink Latest Updates from this link [...]

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DOUG DOWD FOR OBAMA – Part 2 | — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 21:30:38 +0000

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