ICS file format

I kinda got this to work (date/time format hasn't worked too well..?), I ended up using a single NID argument, and not attaching it to any view... however using a URL of event/NID/my-calendar.ics (without attaching it to any view) and a tweak of my template.php and node-event.tpl.php means I can insert a event/NID/my-calendar.vcs link on each Event type page.

Only minor issue with your posted code is closing the PHP tag at the end of views-bonus-export-ics.tpl.php (my understanding is to leave off closing PHP tags only on template.php and .module files). Anyway, thanks for your efforts. Such functionality gets my vote.

snorkers, i noticed that you took a different method to do what i'm looking for. I don't have the views bonus module on my system and from all the posts i've read there are methods to create the ics file using views and calendar ical.

i was going to attempt to use mdrummond's code to tweak it to my system, but it seems that i might be able to use your method. would you be willing to share what you did? my goal was to put it on my node-event.tpl file as well. i don't know if i took the best route to create my ics because the views are not giving me as much flexibility.

@stsai I've pretty much used @mdrummond's code, although had to alter the field names in views-bonus-export-ics.tpl.php.

As mentioned above, the only change I made was to the View, partially because I'm not using repeat dates (so no Delta available), but use of a single argument (the Nid) made life simpler. I changed the URL to event/%/download, then created a node-event.tpl.php file which has the following snippet to generate a link to download the event as an .ics file:

<a href='/event/<?php print $node->nid; ?>/download' title="Download this event to Outlook or iCal" />Download event</a>

And this works fine for Outlook. iCal had a few issues, especially if more than one event was downloaded - the duplicate filename seemed to overwrite the first event download... so a further tweak I made was to make each .ics file a unique name - just added a server timestamp to the filename in views_bonus_export.module (about line 189):

drupal_set_header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="event-'.time().'.ics"; ');

With a bit of effort, this offers great functionality, but it needs a bit of work to get around the fieldnames issue before we start rolling patches. I'm not quite the man for this yet - put it this way, I've signed up to the introduction to module development pre-training at DrupalCon SF. So maybe in a few weeks!

snorkers, yeah that's the route I took too, although it's a pure module rather than needing any theme messyness.

<?php

function event_ics_menu(){
    $items['node/%node/add_to_calendar.ics'] = array(
       'title' => 'Add to calendar',
       'page callback' => 'event_ics_download',
       'page arguments' => array(1),
       'access callback' => 'event_ics_access',
       'access arguments' => array(1), 
       'type' => MENU_CALLBACK,
    );
    
    return $items;

}

function event_ics_access($node){
    if($node->type == "event" && user_access('access content'))
        return true;
    else
        return false;
    
}

function event_ics_download($node){
    
    
    $t = strtotime($node->field_event_datetime[0]['value']);
    
    drupal_set_header('Content-Type: text/calendar; charset=utf-8;');
    drupal_set_header('Content-Disposition: inline; filename="add_to_calendar.ics";');
    
    $title = $node->title;
    $description = "Read more at " . url($node->path, array('absolute' => true));
    $location = $node->field_location[0]['value'];
    $dtstart = _event_ics_date_parse($node->field_event_datetime[0]['value']);
    $dtend = _event_ics_date_parse($node->field_event_datetime[0]['value2']);
    $uid = $node->nid;
    
  
    $retval = "BEGIN:VCALENDAR
PRODID:-//Calendar//Calendar Event//EN
CALSCALE:GREGORIAN
METHOD:PUBLISH
DTSTAMP:$dtstart
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART:$dtstart
DTEND:$dtend
SUMMARY:$title
DESCRIPTION:$description
LOCATION:$location
SEQUENCE:0
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR";


    print($retval);
    
    exit();

}

function event_ics_link($type, $node, $teaser = false){
    if($type == 'node' && $node->type == 'event'){
        $links['iCal'] = array(
            'title' => t("Add to my calendar"),
            'href' => 'node/' . $node->nid . '/add_to_calendar.ics',
        );
        
        return $links;
    }
}

function _event_ics_date_parse($inp){
    $t = strtotime($inp);
    
    $t = format_date($t + 43200, 'custom', 'Ymd His');
    
    return strtr($t, array(' ' => 'T'));
    
}

@snorkers When I use the method you've outlined above, everything works perfectly on a Mac or a PC when using iCal or Outlook. However, when I click on the "download" link on an iPad, safari repeatedly refreshes the download page and never actually grabs the .ics file. Any ideas what I might be doing wrong?

After further investigation, it looks like neither the iPhone nor the iPad support the .ics file format directly. Users are expected to open .ics calendar files on either their Mac or PC and then sync the appointment details to the device using iTunes. There are even some paid apps that are meant to help users work around this particular issue (e.g., http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ics-meeting-viewer/id382013156?mt=8, http://itunes.com/apps/calendarview)

http://www.theipadguide.com/faq/does-ipad-support-or-read-icalendar-outl...

This is something a potential client needs, so thanks @mdrummond! I'm thinking it would also be mighty handy for g.d.o., amongst other places...

Thanks again!

Hello fellow developers. I'm not a drupal developer, I develop in ColdFusion but through my searching for an issue we're having with iCal Version 4.0.3 I came across your posting here and it has a pretty extensive and up to date information on ics formatted files.

My issue is with a client who, after importing her .ics file to her MacBook iCal program she's having to accept/decline all events on the new calendar she creates from this .ics file. Outlook works properly with no issues but iCal Version 4.0.3 seems to force the individual to accept or decline the individual entries imported from her file. I believe she's also set up a sync to her Google calendar as well.

We were able to replicate the issue on our machine here OS X (10.6.4) iCal Version 4.0.3 (1388) just by simply importing an .ics file with events and when one of (or any of) these events were clicked after the calendar was created would give us this accept/deny option before viewing the event.

I will also point out that iCal Version 3.0.8 (1287) works just fine, so this is something new that has been implemented in the newer version(s) of iCal. I've been searching for some sort of code that might help me make these events automatically accepted in some way. If any of you are an expert in this area and know of a way to automatically accept these events either by sending it through the code in the .ics file or setting up some sort of Mac preference. I haven't been able to find anything to bypass this annoyance.

back to right title...

Just out of interest why do you call _event_ics_date_parse($inp)?

This adds 12 hours onto the time it I'm not mistaken?

Is this something to do with Outlook or something else?

@rimu, where is this module? How does one install it?

Has anybody tried this solution? If worked, how did you get it to work?

Thanks.

There is no module to download. Just copy the php and create your own module. Just make sure that you name the hooks the same as your module so if you call your module myicsmodule you would change the first hook for example to myicsmodule_menu (hook_menu).

You then need to call the menu item with a link, I used views to output mine but you could also do it in your node.tpl.php. I think I used something like this:

node/[nid]/add_to_calendar.ics

or in your node.tpl

node/$node->nid/add_to_calendar.ics

Also make sure that you adjust these variables to suit your content type:

function myicsmodule_download($node) {
    $t = strtotime($node->field_event_datetime[0]['value']);
    
    drupal_set_header('Content-Type: text/calendar; charset=utf-8;');
    drupal_set_header('Content-Disposition: inline; filename="add_to_calendar.ics";');
    
    $title = $node->title;
    $description = "Read more at " . url($node->path, array('absolute' => true));
    $location = $node->field_location[0]['value'];
    $dtstart = _event_ics_date_parse($node->field_event_datetime[0]['value']);
    $dtend = _event_ics_date_parse($node->field_event_datetime[0]['value2']);
    $uid = $node->nid;
}

This is essentially a cleaned-up version of rimu's approach. This approach has no connection to views, but this is a useful page on ics links regardless.

<?php

/**
* @file
* Create an 'Add to Outlook' link on events that opens an .ics file.
*/

/**
* Implements hook_menu().
*/
function event_ics_menu() {
$items['node/%node/add_to_calendar.ics'] = array(
'title' => 'Add to Outlook',
'page callback' => 'event_ics_download',
'page arguments' => array(1),
'access callback' => 'node_access',
'access arguments' => array('view', 1),
'type' => MENU_CALLBACK,
);
return $items;
}

/**
* Implements hook_link().
*/
function event_ics_link($type, $node, $teaser = false){
if ($type == 'node' && $node->type == 'event'){
$links['event_ics'] = array(
'title' => t("Add to Outlook"),
'href' => 'node/' . $node->nid . '/add_to_calendar.ics',
);
return $links;
}
}

/**
* Menu callback. Create the .ics file.
*/
function event_ics_download($node) {
drupal_set_header('Content-Type: text/calendar; charset=utf-8;');
drupal_set_header('Content-Disposition: inline; filename="add_to_calendar.ics";');

$title = check_plain($node->title);
$description = t("Read more at !link", array('!link' => url('node/' . $node->nid, array('absolute' => TRUE))));
$location = check_plain($node->field_location[0]['value']);
$dtstart = _event_ics_date_parse($node->field_date[0]['value']);
$dtend = _event_ics_date_parse($node->field_date[0]['value2']);
print "BEGIN:VCALENDAR
PRODID:-//Calendar//Calendar Event//EN
CALSCALE:GREGORIAN
METHOD:PUBLISH
DTSTAMP:$dtstart
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART:$dtstart
DTEND:$dtend
SUMMARY:$title
DESCRIPTION:$description
LOCATION:$location
SEQUENCE:0
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR";
exit();
}

/**
* Convert dates to the required format for ics.
*/
function _event_ics_date_parse($date) {
$date = date_convert($date, DATE_ISO, DATE_UNIX);
$date = format_date($date, 'custom', 'Ymd His');
return str_replace(' ', 'T', $date);
}

In case it might help get ics support added to the module, I've created a patch containing the changes suggested by mdrummond in the original post. The only thing I changed was to clear out the $Id$ comments in the new files.

I made a few changes to the patch that I think make it significantly more flexible. Rather than hard coding the fields to be used, I switched to looping through the fields specified in the View and using the Labels associated with fields as the iCal properties. One downside is that you need to get familiar with the iCalendar specification, to know how to configure the labels.

A few tips that may come in handy when using this method to generate the feed:

• To use a time/date field, I specified the following Custom format: Ymd\THis\Z
• In some cases, it can be useful to combine multiple fields, using the Rewrite the output of this field setting.
• The iCalendar Validator can be useful for checking new feeds.

Here's an updated patch file using git diff --full-index --binary, so the icon file is now included too.

Does it work for D7 too?
I am getting an error "call to undefined function drupal_set_header () ;
Can I get some help using the same for D7

Thanks

The method I'm using for D7 is the Views iCal module. http://drupal.org/project/views_ical