On of my many, many tasks today is to enable the output of a Notes-based view as an iCalendar (.ics) file, so uses can import it to the own calendar application.

To do this is simple. Just print the content-type "text/calendar" from the outputting agent and then print out all the entries in the required format.

I wrote the code to do this in very little time but then spent just as long wondering why on earth the content wasn't being outputted.

Then I realised what I'd done. Remember a couple of years ago I mentioned a way to print data to the content headers of a page? Inadvertently, that is what I had done.

Here's what my code looked like (simplified to prove a point):

Print "content-type: text/calendar"
Print "BEGIN:VCALENDAR"
Print "BEGIN:VEVENT"
Print "DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20090909"
Print "END:VEVENT"
Print "BEGIN:VCALENDAR"

When I opened it in the browser all that was in the file downloaded was:

DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20090909
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VCALENDAR

After a maddening ten minutes or so I realised that all the lines after the content-type header were also being treated as headers. Firstly because they are in the format "XXX: yyyyy" i.e. a word followed by a colon. Secondly because I hadn't put a blank line between the header and the output. My code should (and does now) have looked like this:

Print "content-type: text/calendar"
Print ""
Print "BEGIN:VCALENDAR"
Print "BEGIN:VEVENT"
Print "DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20090909"
Print "END:VEVENT"
Print "BEGIN:VCALENDAR"

There's a lesson in there somewhere!

iCalendar Format??

Didn't know you could export in a standard calendar format? Well, you can. Here's an example file which is based on this standard.

To output your Notes-stored dates in the right format you can do this:

Print "CREATED:"+Format(doc.Created, "yyyymmddThhMM00")

Although you might need to modify that if you want it accurate to the second or you're in a different timezone to GMT etc.