civievent (1.9 and 2.0) Ical for events not working in drupal 5.6

[sonicthoughts]

Ical in drupal gets error warning:
Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /public_html/drupal/sites/all/modules/calendar/calendar_ical.module on line 107.

I am using the latest calendar and date API snapshot (calendar 5.x-2.x-dev).  This was reccommended because of timezone errors with the current release.

The calendar works fine with ICS files from 2 other sources.  THIS IS REPEATABLE in the CIVICRM 2.0 demo sandbox. It seems to be a parsing error related to the way that civi builds the ICS.

It could be related to access (I can't change / test register event ACL in the sandbox.) but I can read the ICS in civi from the web address.

Has anyone else tried the latest calendar/date API snapshot with civi ICS?

Thanks

[Dave Greenberg]

We're running Calendar 5.x-1.7 under Drupal 5.7 with CiviCRM 2.0 Beta on the 2.0 demo (http://demo.civicrm.org) - and the iCal feed for CiviEvent seems to be working without errors - although the timezone problem is apparent (7:00am event start time shows as 14:00)

http://drupal.demo.civicrm.org/calendar/2008/5/all

... it would be most helpful if you could do some further digging / debugging to see aspect of the ICS data is causing the error prior to final 2.0 - so if it's something on our side we can fix it.

[Michał Mach]

I did an initial research on that issue and here's what I've found out:

We populate iCal date fields using gmdate, which returns GMT/UTC version of the given date. We also designate this date properly by adding capital Z at the end of it. This is proper behaviour as per rfc2445, which describes iCal format (http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2445.txt - page 35, chapter 4.3.5).

Initial conclusion would be that Drupal calendar doesn't honor this correct behaviour and doesn't convert the date back to server based timezone. Don't want to blame third party, but at first sight it might be the issue. Please allow us some more time to dig into this problem.

In the meantime, it would be great if you could post a bug report on our issue tracker (http://issues.civicrm.org).

Thx,
m

[sonicthoughts]

Sorry - I was not referring to the Calendar 5.x-1.7 but the new rewrite Calendar 5.x-2.dev (http://drupal.org/node/92594/release)  that is underway (soon to be released.)  NOTE this relies on the new Date module in dev also.

They have completely re-written the Ical parser.  It works fine with Google and 2 other Ical services but does not work with Civi 1.9.  I thought it could be a permission issue with event registration rights, but I can read the civi Ical directly from the web address  (I couldn't verify the ACL on the sandbox 2.0 because I don't have permission.) so I have ruled that out.

I already noted the issue in the module Issue (but I doubt they can test with civi.) This is not a timezone issue, however it was because of the timezone issue that I tried this module.  Apparently the 2.dev version will fix the timezone issue.

[Donald Lobo]

would be great if you could help debug this and let us know what needs to be fixed with regard to our ical output. ideally such fixes will not affect either google / apple ical

lobo

[Michał Mach]

They have completely re-written the Ical parser.  It works fine with Google and 2 other Ical services but does not work with Civi 1.9.

Could you paste the values of DTSTART: and DTEND: from feeds that worked fine with you, it should provide a valuable clue.

Thx,
m

[sonicthoughts]

sure:

This works: http://ical.mac.com/julianvgomez/Los%20Angeles%20Dodgers%202008%20Schedule.ics
This does not: http://onepurim.com/civicrm/event/ical?reset=1 .  Nor does the sandbox.

[gbear]

Hi, just adding a voice & my test environment to this thread. 

I also have the dev version of Calendar 2.0 running and unable to get the iCal from CiviCRM.  However other ical feeds are processing correctly.

[Donald Lobo]

gbear/sonicthoughts:

Your best bet would be to take the save the civicrm ical in a static page and then tweak it (as little as possible) to get drupal calendar module to accept it. Note that you do not need any php programming skills for this exercise. This would help us a lot (and a few folks in the community too!). Hopefully the changes are not too big and we can push it into the 2.0 release.

We do not have enough expertise in the drupal calendar module and/or ical format to help out here. We did test the output (when we developed it) with google/apple ical and it worked fine

lobo

[gbear]

Thanks - I think there is an issue in calendar reading the VEVENT information.  Looking at my ical file from Civi, it would be hard to know what structure to really change.  I added a little note to this thread and the module maintainer Karen is very active.  More details are over on that side:  http://drupal.org/node/217898#comment-736064 

I would think this is an issue in Calendar's ical handling rather than something specific to the CiviCRM output.  On further experiements - I added in this from national holiday calendar:
http://www.google.com/calendar/ical/usa__en%40holiday.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics    It seemed to work, but the only holiday that appears on the calendar is Easter, the file contains much more VEVENT info than that.

I'd think this is a really popular calendaring solution for CiviCRM Users - since it integrates nicely into Drupal, and drives right to specific event pages.

[Dave Greenberg]

Thanks for pushing this forward a bit. I've posted a follow-up question for Karen here:
http://drupal.org/node/217898#comment-737424

... in the meantime - if you can create a static page from your own CiviCRM ical output and modify the DTSTART and DTEND lines to use the format referenced by Karen - and let us know if that fixes things - that would be most helpful.

So instead of this:
DTSTART:20080224T010000Z

...this:
DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20080224T010000Z

[Michał Mach]

So instead of this:
DTSTART:20080224T010000Z

...this:
DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20080224T010000Z

To be specific, please try the following: DTSTART;VALUE=DATE-TIME:20080224T010000Z

Thx,
m

[sonicthoughts]

Karen seemed to find another issue.  Cross referenced here and as an issue (sorry if this is not good etiquette) :  http://issues.civicrm.org/jira/browse/CRM-2654

The new drupal calendar module is a release candidate and will soon be released. Please see an update on the drupal calendar thread (http://drupal.org/node/217898#comment-737494)

Also, civicrm 2.0 Ical for events in the sandbox beta do not work in google calendar. I tried it for:

http://drupal.demo.civicrm.org/civicrm/event/ical?reset=1&page=1 and
http://drupal.demo.civicrm.org/civicrm/event/ical?reset=1

NOTE - that i could not verify that ACL permission is set up for event registration in the sandbox.

It may be a simple fix as noted by Karen in the thread.

I wish I could offer more help.

s.

[Dave Greenberg]

The demo permissions are set to allow anonymous access to the ical feeds. You can verify this by accessing those pages from your browser when you're NOT logged in to Drupal.

What specifically are you seeing in Google Calendar (you say it "doesn't work). Can you post the setup steps you're doing and the error or problem you get.

[sonicthoughts]

Sure.

Go to http://www.google.com/calendar/render?tab=oc
On "My Calenders" on the left side of screen, Click "Add" Dropdown and select "Add By URL".
In the URL form added:"http://drupal.demo.civicrm.org/civicrm/event/ical?reset=1&page=1"
the URL adds, but when you check the calendar and click on the link in the left to see entries they are blank.
eventually, google gives an error (after 5 minutes it says"Failed to import calendar from "http://drupal.demo.civicrm.org/civicrm/event/ical?reset=1&page=1".

Also tried to add: "http://drupal.demo.civicrm.org/civicrm/event/ical?reset=1"

I believe this should work (unless I'm doing something really silly.)  Karen S. said it failed on the ICAL i gave her.
Please see her post for her explanation.  it seems DIFFERENT from the DSTART format (which may be an additional problem.)

I hope that helps.