Textpattern CMS

#1 2010-09-06 04:22:19

JanDW

Plugin Author

From: Providence, RI, USA

Registered: 2008-07-18

Posts: 327

Website

iCal + google calendar questions

I’m creating an ical (.ics) stream with smd_calendar + rah_external_output. I’m now trying to integrate it with google calendar. There were a few things I can’t quite seem to figure out.

1. When I add the calendar (other calendars > add > add by url) it doesn’t seem to pick up the name of the calendar set in the ical header.

X-WR-CALNAME:Nacul

Instead I get something like: h4k6ujp4ra5bfei3d3v5bjlt94s1rsbv@import.calendar.google.com as the calendar name.

2. Can I create a one-click link on my site that will take a user to their google accounts and subscribes them to the ical stream?

edit: I found the solution to that one. In case anyone is curious: a link to : https://www.google.com/calendar/render?cid=http://domain.com/?rah_external_output=events.ics seems to do the trick

3. When I update my ical stream, google calendar doesn’t pick up on it quickly… can something be done about that? Do CTags take care of that? And if so, how do i use them.

This is what the stream looks like

Thanks.

Last edited by JanDW (2010-09-06 06:25:09)

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TXPDream – A Textpattern Tag Library for Adobe Dreamweaver. (updated for 4.2.0) | jdw_if_ajax – Only serve certain parts of a page when requested with AJAX

#2 2010-09-17 15:32:16

mrtunes

Member

From: Toronto, On

Registered: 2007-03-12

Posts: 575

Website

Re: iCal + google calendar questions

were you doing something like adding a button to articles saying “add to my calendar”? i found this kind of integration very difficult, mainly because of time zone issues that are beyond my knowledge level.

#3 2010-09-21 20:29:25

JanDW

Plugin Author

From: Providence, RI, USA

Registered: 2008-07-18

Posts: 327

Website

Re: iCal + google calendar questions

Hi Elliot – no, that part I’ve got working.

I markup each event in the hcalendar microformat. To get UTC time to put in the title attribute of the abbr element, I use gmstrftime();

<abbr class="dtstart" title="<txp:php>echo gmstrftime('%Y%m%dT%H%M00Z', $thisarticle['posted'] );</txp:php>">...</abbr>

Hope that helps.

edit: I then use jQuery to extract the data from the hcalendar microformat and add a “add to gcal” link to the page). For the href, I just use jQuery.param() to create a url like the one you can create here

Last edited by JanDW (2010-09-21 20:33:51)

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TXPDream – A Textpattern Tag Library for Adobe Dreamweaver. (updated for 4.2.0) | jdw_if_ajax – Only serve certain parts of a page when requested with AJAX

#4 2011-01-29 14:39:56

robhert

Member

From: Perú

Registered: 2007-04-27

Posts: 206

Website

Re: iCal + google calendar questions

Hi Jan. Could you share your scripts here so I could use it, because I dont know how to extract the data with jQuery. Please! Thanks in advance!

#5 2011-01-29 16:24:56

JanDW

Plugin Author

From: Providence, RI, USA

Registered: 2008-07-18

Posts: 327

Website

Re: iCal + google calendar questions

Hi Robhert,

Replace www.yoursite.com with the obvious, and replace organization in sprop:'name:Organisation'.

So if you’ve marked up your events as hCalendar, the jQuery script below will loop through them, extract event data, create a url with parameters and insert it before .ical in the page.

Here it is in action: http://tiaarchitects.com/events/darlingside-benefit-concert

You might want to have a look at the event publisher guide as well.

Good luck, hombre.

$(document).ready(function() {
	$('.vevent').each(function(){
		var $event = $(this);
		addToCal($event);
	});

	//serializes the hcalendar format and submits it to google calendar
	function addToCal($event){
		//get all parameters from hcalendar
		var $query = new Array();
			$query['text'] = $event.find('.summary').text();
			$query['dtstart']= $event.find('.dtstart').attr('title');
			$query['dtend']= $event.find('.dtend').attr('title');
			//make sure url doesn't get too long, use only first paragraph
			$query['description'] = $event.find('.description p:first').text();
			$query['location'] = $event.find('.location').text();
		//build url for add to google calendar	
		var queryObj = {
			action:'TEMPLATE',
			text: $query['text'],
			dates: $query['dtstart']  + '/' + $query['dtend'],
			details: $query['description'],
			location: $query['location'],
			trp: 'false',
			sprop:'http%3A%2F%2Fwww.yourwebsite.com',
			sprop:'name:Organisation'					
		}	
		// insert link into the page
		var $ical = $event.find('.ical');
		var href = 'http://www.google.com/calendar/event?' + jQuery.param(queryObj);
		$('<a href="" class="gcal" title="Post this event to Google Calendar.">Add to Google Calendar</a>')
			.attr('href',href)
			.insertBefore($ical);	
		//var permlink = 'http://www.yoursite.com/calendar/some-event';
		//permlink = permlink.replace('http://www.','');
	};		
});

Last edited by JanDW (2011-01-29 16:26:40)

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TXPDream – A Textpattern Tag Library for Adobe Dreamweaver. (updated for 4.2.0) | jdw_if_ajax – Only serve certain parts of a page when requested with AJAX