hCalendar Example 1 Steps

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This is a step by step explanation of the first example in the hCalendar specification.

Example

Here is a sample event in an iCalendar: 

BEGIN:VCALENDAR
PRODID:-//XYZproduct//EN
VERSION:2.0
BEGIN:VEVENT
URL:http://conferences.oreillynet.com/pub/w/40/program.html
DTSTART:20051005
DTEND:20051008
SUMMARY:Web 2.0 Conference
LOCATION:Argent Hotel\, San Francisco\, CA
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR

and an equivalent event in hCalendar format: 

<div class="vevent">
 <a class="url" href="http://conferences.oreillynet.com/pub/w/40/program.html/">
  <span class="summary">Web 2.0 Conference</span></a>: 
 <span class="dtstart">2005-10-05</span>- 
 <span class="dtend">2005-10-07</span>,
 at the <span class="location">Argent Hotel, San Francisco, CA</span>
</div>

which could be displayed as:

  Web 2.0 Conference: 2005-10-05- 2005-10-07, at the Argent Hotel, San Francisco, CA

Note that this is a live hCalendar microformat, which will be found on this page by parsers.

Note 1: The product information is not necessary since hCalendar is an interchange format. When transforming hCalendar back into iCalendar, the transforming engine should add its own product ID.

Note 2: A surrounding element is optional, and can be left out as such. It is optional since the context of a vcalendar is implied when a vevent is encountered. The implied context/scope is that of the document. Authors may explicitly use elements with class="vcalendar" to wrap sets of vevents that all belong to the same calendar, e.g. when publishing multiple calendars on the same page.

Note 3: The version information is unnecessary in hCalendar markup directly since the version will be defined by the profile of hCalendar that is used/referred to in the 'profile' attribute of the <head> element.

Note 4: ISO8601 dates without dashes are however not very human friendly, thus we've added dashes. In addition, the year is often understood implicitly by humans from the context. Thus this example could be improved by using <abbr> to make the date information more human readable and friendly, e.g. 

<span class="vevent">
 <a class="url" href="http://conferences.oreillynet.com/pub/w/40/program.html/">
  <span class="summary">Web 2.0 Conference</span></a>: 
  <abbr class="dtstart" title="2005-10-05">October 5</abbr>-
  <abbr class="dtend" title="2005-10-07">7</abbr>,
 at the <span class="location">Argent Hotel, San Francisco, CA</span>
</span>

which could be displayed as:

  Web 2.0 Conference: October 5- 7, at the Argent Hotel, San Francisco, CA

Note 5: The iCalendar has DTEND:20051008 (note the 8) vs. the hCalendar has the human visible (and actual) end date of 2005-10-07 (note the 7). This is deliberate. In the case of the end datetime in iCalendar (DTEND), the date must be specified as a whole day after the last day since DTEND is exclusive in iCalendar. This was very confusing for human authors so with microformats we have fixed this to be consistent with human expectations (visible end date is inclusive). See the dtend-issue for more details on research and resolution.

Related pages

This specification is a work in progress. As additional aspects are discussed, understood, and written, they will be added. These thoughts, issues, and questions are kept in separate pages.

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