All Day Events

[jpincas]

Thanks so much for this package - you've saved me hours!

Just wanted to report on my findings while trying to work out how to output an 'all day event'. 99% this is down to me not knowing how to use iCal spec/this package, but just wanted to make some notes/ask a question.

From inspecting other feeds that were showing all day events correctly, it looked like the structure needed to be:

DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20201101

To get that output I had to bypass the helper functions, format the date manually with a copy of your 'icalDateFormatLocal' (otherwise the Z at the end caused the event not to display) and manually specify the DATE value.

event.SetProperty(ics.ComponentPropertyDtStart, t.Start.UTC().Format(icalDateFormatLocal), ics.WithValue("DATE"))

I imagine that I'm missing a much easier way to do this, but couldn't find it to save my life.

[arran4]

No worries. Thanks! Glad it saved you time.

We do have some helper functions for Event DT Start at

golang-ical/components.go

Line 85 in a5af9a2

func (event *VEvent) SetStartAt(t time.Time, props ...PropertyParameter) {

We had some discussion around it here: #47

Does that work for you?

The library is really just a serializer / deserializer and probably needs another layer to make it more usable. Other people have asked this of me. Sadly I didn't / don't have time to do this right now.

[miroslavhajek]

@jpincas Hi, I have same problem. This lib doesn't works with Apple Calendar when event is all day type.

My workaround:

const (
	dateFormatUtc = "20060102"

	propertyDtStart ical.Property = "DTSTART;VALUE=DATE"
	propertyDtEnd   ical.Property = "DTEND;VALUE=DATE"

	componentPropertyDtStart = ical.ComponentProperty(propertyDtStart)
	componentPropertyDtEnd   = ical.ComponentProperty(propertyDtEnd)
)

cal := ical.NewCalendar()
event := cal.AddEvent("1")
event.SetProperty(componentPropertyDtStart, time.Now().UTC().Format(dateFormatUtc))
event.SetProperty(componentPropertyDtEnd, ...)

[arran4]

What does a native Apple Calendar "all day" event look like?

[kevinmorio]

Hi, let me chime in as the same problem occurred to me as well.

First, to answer your question @arran4, an all day event from Apple Calendar looks like this

BEGIN:VEVENT
DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20230222
UID:EDF57D2A-FA37-4FFD-9076-921572E37CAB
SUMMARY:All Day Event
DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20230221
DTSTAMP:20221219T195041Z
END:VEVENT

For an all day event, a value type of DATE is used both for the DTSTART and DTEND properties with an offset of one day for DTEND. From my testing, Android and Nextcloud use the same format. Importing works as expected.

Coming back to the library, using the corresponding helper functions SetAllDayStartAt and SetAllDayEndAt produces an event like this

BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART:20221231Z
DTEND:20221231Z
SUMMARY:All Day Event
DTSTAMP:20221219T200805Z
END:VEVENT

However, these values for DTSTART and DTEND are invalid for the value type DATE-TIME according to iCalendar spec: 4.3.5 Date-Time as they don't contain a time but the UTC Z.

As noticed by @jpincas and myself, it also seems to work by removing the UTC Z at the end. However, this doesn't seem to be in the specification.

I propose changing the helper functions to

const icalDateFormat = "20060102"

func (event *VEvent) SetAllDayStartAt(t time.Time, props ...PropertyParameter) {
	event.SetProperty(ComponentPropertyDtStart, t.UTC().Format(icalDateFormat), WithValue(string(ValueDataTypeDate)))
}

func (event *VEvent) SetAllDayEndAt(t time.Time, props ...PropertyParameter) {
	event.SetProperty(ComponentPropertyDtEnd, t.UTC().Format(icalDateFormat), WithValue(string(ValueDataTypeDate)))

I'm not sure if we should also add the one day offset in the helper method.

[arran4]

Hi @jpincas and @kevinmorio @miroslavhajek

I believe that some issues with all day events has been addressed in a previous PR (you can see them reference this) can someone give me an idea of the current issues with the implementation. Having done some work around it recently in a couple PRs but what comes to mind is: #110 . It needs some work IMHO however I can't really do that without knowing the issues.

I have some time today and tomorrow to work on it and hopefully next weekend as well. Let me know.

I will close this in November if no responses.