sdague-icalendar

= iCalendar -- Internet calendaring, Ruby style

This is a Ruby library for dealing with iCalendar files. Rather than explaining myself, here is the introduction from RFC-2445, which defines the format:

The use of calendaring and scheduling has grown considerably in the last decade. Enterprise and inter-enterprise business has become dependent on rapid scheduling of events and actions using this information technology. However, the longer term growth of calendaring and scheduling, is currently limited by the lack of Internet standards for the message content types that are central to these knowledgeware applications. This memo is intended to progress the level of interoperability possible between dissimilar calendaring and scheduling applications. This memo defines a MIME content type for exchanging electronic calendaring and scheduling information. The Internet Calendaring and Scheduling Core Object Specification, or iCalendar, allows for the capture and exchange of information normally stored within a calendaring and scheduling application; such as a Personal Information Manager (PIM) or a Group Scheduling product.

The iCalendar format is suitable as an exchange format between applications or systems. The format is defined in terms of a MIME content type. This will enable the object to be exchanged using several transports, including but not limited to SMTP, HTTP, a file system, desktop interactive protocols such as the use of a memory- based clipboard or drag/drop interactions, point-to-point asynchronous communication, wired-network transport, or some form of unwired transport such as infrared might also be used.

Now for some examples:

Probably want to start with this

require 'rubygems' # Unless you install from the tarball or zip. require 'icalendar' require 'date'

include Icalendar # Probably do this in your class to limit namespace overlap

Creating calendars and events is easy.

Create a calendar with an event (standard method)

cal = Calendar.new cal.event do dtstart Date.new(2005, 04, 29) dtend Date.new(2005, 04, 28) summary "Meeting with the man." description "Have a long lunch meeting and decide nothing..." klass "PRIVATE" end

cal.publish

Or you can make events like this

event = Event.new event.start = DateTime.civil(2006, 6, 23, 8, 30) event.summary = "A great event!" cal.add_event(event)

event2 = cal.event # This automatically adds the event to the calendar event2.start = DateTime.civil(2006, 6, 24, 8, 30) event2.summary = "Another great event!"

Now with support for property parameters

params = {"ALTREP" =>['"http://my.language.net"'], "LANGUAGE" => ["SPANISH"]}

cal.event do dtstart Date.new(2005, 04, 29) dtend Date.new(2005, 04, 28) summary "This is a summary with params.", params end

We can output the calendar as a string to write to a file,

network port, database etc.

cal_string = cal.to_ical puts cal_string

ALARMS

Within an event, you can create e-mail notification alarms like this...

cal.event.do # ...other event properties alarm do action "EMAIL" description "This is an event reminder" # email body (required) summary "Alarm notification" # email subject (required) attendees %w(mailto:[e-mail] mailto:[e-mail]) # one or more email recipients (required) add_attendee "mailto:[e-mail]" remove_attendee "mailto:[e-mail]" trigger "-PT15M" # 15 minutes before add_attach "ftp://host.com/novo-procs/felizano.exe", {"FMTTYPE" => "application/binary"} # email attachments (optional) end

alarm do
  action        "DISPLAY" # This line isn't necessary, it's the default
  summary       "Alarm notification"
  trigger       "-P1DT0H0M0S" # 1 day before
end

alarm do
  action        "AUDIO"
  trigger       "-PT15M"
  add_attach    "Basso", {"VALUE" => ["URI"]}  # only one attach allowed (optional)
end

end

Output

BEGIN:VALARM

ACTION:EMAIL

ATTACH;FMTTYPE=application/binary:ftp://host.com/novo-procs/felizano.exe

TRIGGER:-PT15M

SUMMARY:Alarm notification

DESCRIPTION:This is an event reminder

ATTENDEE:mailto:[e-mail]

ATTENDEE:mailto:[e-mail]

END:VALARM

BEGIN:VALARM

ACTION:DISPLAY

TRIGGER:-P1DT0H0M0S

SUMMARY:Alarm notification

END:VALARM

BEGIN:VALARM

ACTION:AUDIO

ATTACH;VALUE=URI:Basso

TRIGGER:-PT15M

END:VALARM

Timezones

Create a timezone definition (previous convention)

cal = Calendar.new timezone = Icalendar::Timezone.new daylight = Icalendar::Daylight.new standard = Icalendar::Standard.new

timezone.timezone_id = "America/Chicago"

daylight.timezone_offset_from = "-0600" daylight.timezone_offset_to = "-0500" daylight.timezone_name = "CDT" daylight.dtstart = "19700308TO20000" daylight.recurrence_rules = ["FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=3;BYDAY=2SU"]

standard.timezone_offset_from = "-0500" standard.timezone_offset_to = "-0600" standard.timezone_name = "CST" standard.dtstart = "19701101T020000" standard.recurrence_rules = ["YEARLY;BYMONTH=11;BYDAY=1SU"]

timezone.add(daylight) timezone.add(standard) cal.add(timezone)

Now, you can make timezones like this

cal = Calendar.new cal.timezone do timezone_id "America/Chicago"

daylight do
  timezone_offset_from  "-0600"
  timezone_offset_to    "-0500"
  timezone_name         "CDT"
  dtstart               "19700308TO20000"
  add_recurrence_rule   "FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=3;BYDAY=2SU"
end

standard do
  timezone_offset_from  "-0500"
  timezone_offset_to    "-0600"
  timezone_name         "CST"
  dtstart               "19701101T020000"
  add_recurrence_rule   "YEARLY;BYMONTH=11;BYDAY=1SU"
end

end

Both conventions output

BEGIN:VTIMEZONE

TZID:America/Chicago

BEGIN:DAYLIGHT

TZOFFSETFROM:-0600

TZOFFSETTO:-0500

TZNAME:CDT

DTSTART:19700308T020000

RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=3;BYDAY=2SU

END:DAYLIGHT

BEGIN:STANDARD

TZOFFSETFROM:-0500

TZOFFSETTO:-0600

TZNAME:CST

DTSTART:19701101T020000

RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=11;BYDAY=1SU

END:STANDARD

END:VTIMEZONE

== Unicode Add $KCODE = 'u' to make icalender work correctly with Utf8 texts

== Parsing iCalendars:

Open a file or pass a string to the parser

cal_file = File.open("single_event.ics")

Parser returns an array of calendars because a single file

can have multiple calendars.

cals = Icalendar.parse(cal_file) cal = cals.first

Now you can access the cal object in just the same way I created it

event = cal.events.first

puts "start date-time: " + event.dtstart puts "summary: " + event.summary

== Finders:

Often times in web apps and other interactive applications you'll need to lookup items in a calendar to make changes or get details. Now you can find everything by the unique id automatically associated with all components.

cal = Calendar.new 10.times { cal.event } # Create 10 events with only default data. some_event = cal.events[5] # Grab it from the array of events

Use the uid as the key in your app

key = some_event.uid

so later you can find it.

same_event = cal.find_event(key)

== Examples:

Check the unit tests for examples of most things you'll want to do, but please send me example code or let me know what's missing.

== Download

The latest release version of this library can be found at

• http://rubyforge.org/projects/icalendar/

Documentation can be found at

• http://icalendar.rubyforge.org/

== Installation

It's all about rubygems:

$ sudo gem install icalendar

== License

This library is released under the same license as Ruby itself.

== Support & Contributions

The iCalendar library homepage is http://icalendar.rubyforge.org/

There is an [e-mail] mailing list that can be used for asking questions, making comments or submitting patches.