icalendar-implementations

iCalendar implementations

In the development of hCalendar and proxies like X2V, we have discovered various behaviors and quirks of RFC 2445 iCalendar implementations.

This page is here for keeping track of them.

Contributors

• Tantek Çelik
• Dimitri Glazkov

Products

iCal.app

platform: OSX

subscription handling

supports the non-standard "webcal:" protocol

KOrganizer

platform: All Linux, *BSD, etc. (Wherever KDE runs)

subscription handling

supports the non-standard "webcal:" protocol, as well as "http:", "ftp:", "fish:", etc.

Evolution

platform: Fedora Core 3

subscription handling

supports the non-standard "webcal:" protocol

Sunbird

AKA Mozilla Sunbird

platform: XP, others?

subscription handling

supports the non-standard "webcal:" protocol

Microsoft Outlook

platform: 2003

Importing of VEvents

Requires UID, DTSTAMP, and METHOD

If any of the three is not present, returns this message:

This error can appear if you have attempted to save a recurring Lunar appointment in iCalendar format.
To avoid this error, set the appointment option to Gregorian instead of Lunar.

After some testing, this seems to be the generic message to indicate a problem with event import.

No such restriction is placed on iCal 1.0 events. So, if VERSION:1.0 is output instead of VERSION:2.0, the only required field is DTSTART. Note that VERSION property may be omitted. In this case, value inferred as 1.0.

Minimal valid iCal 2.0 event, importable by MS Outlook 2003

BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
METHOD:PUBLISH
BEGIN:VEVENT
UID:0
DTSTAMP:20060601T080000
DTSTART:20060601T080000
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR

Minimal valid iCal 1.0 event, importable by MS Outlook 2003

BEGIN:VCALENDAR
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART:20060601T080000
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR

Importing of vCards

Outlook does not handle comma separation in the properties of N. It also doesn't handle the escape of commas. For this vCard.

BEGIN:VCARD
FN;CHARSET=UTF-8:Mr. Dr. John Maurice Benjamin Doe Ph.D.\, J.D.
N;CHARSET=UTF-8:Doe;John;Maurice,Benjamin;Mr.,Dr.;Ph.D.,J.D.
END:VCARD

The result in Outlook is:

Mr.,Dr. Mr. Dr. John Maurice Benjamin Doe Ph.D.\, J.D.

Related Pages

• hCalendar - specification
• hCalendar intro - plain English introduction
• hCalendar authoring - learn how to add hCalendar markup to your existing events.
• hCalendar creator (hCalendar creator feedback) - create your own hCalendar events.
• hCalendar cheatsheet - hCalendar properties
• hCalendar examples in the wild - an on-going list of websites which use hCalendars.
• hCalendar implementations - websites or tools which either generate or parse hCalendars
• hCalendar FAQ - If you have any questions about hCalendar, check here.
• hCalendar parsing - normative details of how to parse hCalendar.
• hCalendar profile - the XMDP profile for hCalendar
• hCalendar singular properties - an explanation of the list of singular properties in hCalendar.
• hCalendar tests - a wiki page with actual embedded hCalendar events to try parsing.
• hCalendar "to do" - jobs to do
• hCalendar advocacy - encourage others to use hCalendar.
• iCalendar implementations

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.

• hCalendar Brainstorming - brainstorms and other explorations relating to hCalendar
• hCalendar issues - issues with the specification