iCal WebDAV and iCalendar data exchange

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Brown Bear Software's calendar (BBSW iCal) supports the iCalendar standard for calendar data exchange. This permits BBSW iCal to exchange data with other web calendar programs such as Apple's iCal and Google's calendar. The following documentation provides detailed examples of using BBSW iCal with Apple's iCal, but the concepts can be applied to any iCalendar client program.

Enabling BBSW iCal WebDAV Server
Publishing from Apple iCal to BBSW iCal
Subscribing from Apple iCal to BBSW iCal Calendar
Subscribing from BBSW iCal to an iCalendar file

Enabling BBSW iCal and WebDAV Server

The WebDAV server of BBSW iCal must be enabled before any publish requests will be accepted. This is done from the WebDAV Server form available from the BBSW iCal Global Administration Menu. You will see the following two options.

Enable iCal WebDAV

Publishing from Apple iCal to BBSW iCal

There are two options when publishing to BBSW iCal. You can publish calendars to a specific BBSW iCal calendar only, or you can publish globally and make published data available to all BBSW iCal calendars.

Publishing to a specific iCal Calendar

Calendar Publish Dialog Box

The above is an exampe of how to pubish from Apple' iCal to a specific BBSW iCal web calendar - in this case, a calendar named "mycal".

Publish on: must be set to a Private Server.

Base URL: is assigned the URL that takes you to a specific calendar (mycal).

You must have Edit security access for the BBSW iCal calendar in order to publish to it. The login and password for Edit rights can be entered in the Login: and Password: fields. If no security is set on the BBSW iCal calendar it is still necessary to enter something in the Login: and Password: fields. Anything can be entered, but Apple requires entries for these fields.

After successful publication, the events from the Apple calendar will appear on your BBSW iCal calendar. The publish operation places an iCalendar file onto the BBSW iCal server and makes it available only to the specific calendar. You can see the iCalendar file by going to the Add-Ins administration menu for the calendar. You will see something similar to the following on the Add-In menu:

Add-in menu display

Publishing globally to the iCal system
To publish globally and make published data available to all BBSW iCal calendars, the Base URL: field in the publish menu should have no calendar specified. It would look like this:

Calendar Publish Dialog Box

BBSW iCal never requires a login/password for this method, however Apple iCal requires that you make some entry into these fields. After successful global publication, all BBSW iCal calendars will be able to select the calendar information on the Add-Ins menu.

Subscribing from Apple iCal to BBSW iCal

Apple iCal provides a feature that allows you to Subscribe to other calendars on the Internet. You can use this feature to subscribe to BBSW iCal calendars. From Apple iCal you would do this by choosing Calendar > Subscribe from the menu bar. A dialog box like the one shown below will appear.

Calendar Subscribe Dialog Box

In the dialog box you can enter the URL to access your BBSW iCal calendar. A URL similar to the example is all that is necessary, but it is also possible to add additional parameters. The available parameters are:

startyear YYYY (e.g. 2007)>
endyear YYYY (e.g. 2007)>
startmonth MM (e.g. 05)>
endmonth MM (e.g. 12)>
userloginpass login:password>
category Birthday+Meeting+Personal>
addinfiles yes or no (default is yes)>

A URL using the date range parameters would look as follows:

 http://yourdomain.com/icalsubscribe/mycal?startyear=2006&startmonth=05&endyear=2007&endmonth=12

The userloginpass parameter is needed when the web calendar has view security assigned. The login name and password are separated by a colon. A URL using this parameter would look as follows:

 http://yourdomain.com/icalsubscribe/mycal?userloginpass=login:password

The category parameter can be used to retrieve events that match specific categories. The category names you provide are case sensitive matches with category names assigned by the web calendar. Multiple category names can be listed and are separated with the plus (+) sign.

 http://yourdomain.com/icalsubscribe/mycal?category=Meeting+Birthday

The addinfiles parameter specifies if events from Add-In files and from included calendars should be returned. Valid values are yes and no. The default operation is yes.

 http://yourdomain.com/icalsubscribe/mycal?addinfiles=no

It is possible to provide Subscripion URLs that return only events from Published data.

These URLs will take one of two forms:

 http://yourdomain.com/mycal/myapple.ics
 http://yourdomain.com/myapple.ics

The URL should take the first of the two forms seen above if the calendar data is Published to the specific BBSW iCal calendar named mycal. The userloginpass parameter can be used when the specified calendar has edit security. The URL should take the second of the two forms above if the calendar data is Published globally. Calendars Published globally will always have read access.

The URL's described here can be used with any application program that can read iCalendar data files. This could include Apple's iCal, Google's calendar or any other iCalendar compliant program.

Subscribing from BBSW iCal to an iCalendar file

BBSW iCal also allows you to subscribe to other calendars. Some sites with a large variety of calendars are www.icalshare.com and www.apple.com/macosx/features/ical/library. To subscribe, you must go from the administration menu of any BBSW iCal calendar to the External iCalendar menu option. Here you will find a form similar to the following:

Subscribe to External iCalendar Files

To add a calendar you need only enter the address and choose a display name. You can pull calendar data from any source that can deliver an iCalendar file. This means you can pull from Google calendars open to the public, other BBSW iCal calendars and even Calcium calendars.