Creating a UTC-based .ics file for board meeting invite

[Matt Sicker <bo...@gmail.com>]

I was trying to export an ics file from Zoom to create a recurring
board meeting for the UTC time, but I end up being put into real
calendar applications which have really shitty timezone support (other
than parsing it). These ics files seem fairly trivial syntax-wise, so
I was wondering if anyone knew of a way we could generate them for the
board meetings? It'd be nice to have something more machine-readable
than a calendar text file.

-- 
Matt Sicker <bo...@gmail.com>

Re: Creating a UTC-based .ics file for board meeting invite

[Matt Sicker <bo...@gmail.com>]

Ooh, nice, thanks for the tips everyone! Seems like a simple enough
feature for me to look into.

On Mon, 13 Apr 2020 at 18:14, Sam Ruby <ru...@intertwingly.net> wrote:
>
> On Mon, Apr 13, 2020 at 6:18 PM Matt Sicker <bo...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > I was trying to export an ics file from Zoom to create a recurring
> > board meeting for the UTC time, but I end up being put into real
> > calendar applications which have really shitty timezone support (other
> > than parsing it). These ics files seem fairly trivial syntax-wise, so
> > I was wondering if anyone knew of a way we could generate them for the
> > board meetings? It'd be nice to have something more machine-readable
> > than a calendar text file.
>
> There is a ruby library which will produce ical files:
>
> https://github.com/icalendar/icalendar
>
> You can get the dates of the meetings in the calendar.txt file using
> the ASF::Board.calendar method:
>
> https://whimsy.apache.org/docs/api/ASF/Board.html
>
> Putting those two together into a CGI that returns an ics file ready
> to use is a SMOP[1]. If you get stuck, feel free to either ask
> questions here or hit me up on slack.
>
> > --
> > Matt Sicker <bo...@gmail.com>
>
> - Sam Ruby
>
> [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_matter_of_programming



-- 
Matt Sicker <bo...@gmail.com>

Re: Creating a UTC-based .ics file for board meeting invite

[Sam Ruby <ru...@intertwingly.net>]

On Mon, Apr 13, 2020 at 6:18 PM Matt Sicker <bo...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I was trying to export an ics file from Zoom to create a recurring
> board meeting for the UTC time, but I end up being put into real
> calendar applications which have really shitty timezone support (other
> than parsing it). These ics files seem fairly trivial syntax-wise, so
> I was wondering if anyone knew of a way we could generate them for the
> board meetings? It'd be nice to have something more machine-readable
> than a calendar text file.

There is a ruby library which will produce ical files:

https://github.com/icalendar/icalendar

You can get the dates of the meetings in the calendar.txt file using
the ASF::Board.calendar method:

https://whimsy.apache.org/docs/api/ASF/Board.html

Putting those two together into a CGI that returns an ics file ready
to use is a SMOP[1]. If you get stuck, feel free to either ask
questions here or hit me up on slack.

> --
> Matt Sicker <bo...@gmail.com>

- Sam Ruby

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_matter_of_programming

Re: Creating a UTC-based .ics file for board meeting invite

[Dave Fisher <wa...@comcast.net>]

It is a text format with rules. See Wikipedia: [1] or this page. [2] or this 15 year old forum question [3]

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICalendar
[2] https://openicsfile.com/create.html
[3] https://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=402624

Sent from my iPhone

> On Apr 13, 2020, at 3:18 PM, Matt Sicker <bo...@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> I was trying to export an ics file from Zoom to create a recurring
> board meeting for the UTC time, but I end up being put into real
> calendar applications which have really shitty timezone support (other
> than parsing it). These ics files seem fairly trivial syntax-wise, so
> I was wondering if anyone knew of a way we could generate them for the
> board meetings? It'd be nice to have something more machine-readable
> than a calendar text file.
> 
> -- 
> Matt Sicker <bo...@gmail.com>