Roadmap iCalendar not compatible with Outlook

[malatmals@…]

Expected Results: Right click on the Trac Roadmap iCalendar link and save the file as roadmap.ics file. Outlook2003, File → Import and Export → Import from an iCalendar or vCalendar and select roadmap.ics from where you saved it. Expect it to import the calendar into Outlook.

Actual Results: In actuality you get an error: "vCalendar/iCalendar Import Failed. The input file may be corrupt."

Fix: I played around with the file format and compared it to what you get exporting a calendar file from outlook. From what I can tell to get the file to work in Outlook trac would have to include the following tags:

within each BEGIN:VEVENT and END:VEVENT tags a date time stamp: DTSTAMP:20050830T180757Z

before the first BEGIN:VEVENT tag: METHOD:PUBLISH

Anyhow i'll be glad to test any changes anyone makes just shoot me an email.

[anonymous]

This must be a bug in Outlook, according to rfc2445 neither DTSTAMP nor METHOD is mandatory.

[markus]

Unfortunately Outlook doesn't support the VTODO (and VJOURNAL) type, but this is what Trac expects the calender to do. So, this is indeed a problem of Outlook's poor iCalender support.

[anonymous]

I agree about the VTODO - it's unfortunate - yet It's also a side issue. As long as I can get the VEVENTS in I'm happy for now. And having VTODO's in there doesnt seem to be fouling up the import.

[markus]

Import should work if there's at least one VEVENT in the calender, that's right. But if I open Edgewall's current roadmap.ics with a text editor I can't see any VEVENT in there, so I wonder what VEVENTs you're talking about. Sorry, I'm not really into Trac's iCalender/vCalender support.

[Christopher Lenz]

VEVENTs are included for milestones that have a due date.

[markus]

Actually, the calendar built by Trac is correct according to the vCalendar (V1.0) specification. All you have to do is to change its version to 1.0:

trac/Roadmap.py

@@ -141 +141 @@
         user = req.args.get('user', 'anonymous')
 
         write_prop('BEGIN', 'VCALENDAR')
-        write_prop('VERSION', '2.0')
+        write_prop('VERSION', '1.0')
         write_prop('PRODID', '-//Edgewall Software//NONSGML Trac %s//EN'
                    % __version__)
         write_prop('X-WR-CALNAME',

The other option is to change the generated calendar so that it complies with the iCalendar (V2.0) specification:

trac/Roadmap.py

@@ -144 +144 @@
         write_prop('VERSION', '2.0')
         write_prop('PRODID', '-//Edgewall Software//NONSGML Trac %s//EN'
                    % __version__)
+        write_prop('METHOD', 'PUBLISH')
         write_prop('X-WR-CALNAME',
                    self.config.get('project', 'name') + ' - Roadmap')
         for milestone in milestones:
@@ -152 +153 @@
             if milestone.has_key('due'):
                 write_prop('BEGIN', 'VEVENT')
                 write_prop('UID', uid)
+                write_date('DTSTAMP', localtime(milestone['due']))
                 write_date('DTSTART', localtime(milestone['due']))
                 write_prop('SUMMARY', 'Milestone %s' % milestone['name'])
                 write_prop('URL', req.base_url + '/milestone/' +

The calendar generated by this code complies with the V2.0 specs and gets successfully imported by Outlook. However, it's still incorrect since the DTSTAMP property should hold a date when the VEVENT was created. Unfortunately there's no milestone column named created in Trac's database where this information could be obtained.

Cf. ​http://www.imc.org/pdi/pdiproddev.html, ​http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2445.txt
Ps: The poor vCalendar/iCalendar support by Outlook (unsupported VTODO property) remains, of course.

[markus]

I have to qualify my statement above. The patches do not change the code for the calendar to comply with the specs, they change it in the way that it still complies with the specs but also make it compatible with Outlook. As anonymous already said, according to RFC2445 neither METHOD nor `DTSTAMP' are mandatory.

[Christopher Lenz]

Changing the version to 1.0 breaks compatibility with Apple iCal.

[Christopher Lenz]

The second patch is compatible with iCal, so I'll check that in. Thanks!

[Christopher Lenz]

Fixed in [2377].