Problem with icalendar / ics template

#1 / Nov 18, 2010 2:29pm
Social Spark
11 posts
Hi there

I’ve got a channel of events, and am trying to add a button next to each entry so users can download it to their calendar.

I’ve created a template to generate the ics file. It works fine in Safari but other browsers don’t seem to recognise it as an ics file and just open it as text in the browser. I suspect the problem may be to do with the mime type, but the php at the top doesn’t seem to help (and Safari opens it as ics correctly with our without the php).

I have my template type set to Web. Other types, including xml, just generate errors.

Here’s the template code, though I don’t think that in itself is the problem. In fact I’ve tried pasting in static ics code, which I know works on another site, and still get same issue - ok in Safari but not in anything else.
```
<?php 
header ("Content-Type: text/Calendar"); 
header ("Content-Disposition: inline; filename=iCalendar.ics"); 
?>
BEGIN:VCALENDAR
X-WR-TIMEZONE:Europe/London
PRODID:-//False Economy//NONSGML v1.0//EN
CALSCALE:GREGORIAN
X-WR-CALNAME:False Economy
VERSION:2.0
{exp:channel:entries channel="events" show_future_entries="yes" disable="member_data|pagination|categories" limit="1"}BEGIN:VEVENT
UID:{entry_id}-falseeconomy
URL;VALUE=URI:http://falseeconomy.org.uk/campaigns/event/{url_title}
DTSTAMP:{entry_date format="%Y%m%dT%H%i%sZ"}
DTSTART:{entry_date format="%Y%m%dT%H%i%sZ"}
DTEND:{entry_date format="%Y%m%dT%H%i%sZ"}
LOCATION:{evestreet1}, {evetown} {evepost1} {evepost2}
SUMMARY:{title}
DESCRIPTION:{exp:tagstripper:stripAllTags}{evetext}{/exp:tagstripper:stripAllTags}
END:VEVENT{/exp:channel:entries}
END:VCALENDAR
```
Any advice would be very welcome.
#2 / Nov 19, 2010 3:32am
John Henry Donovan
12339 posts
Clifford,

Add an exit; right after your last header function
```
<?php 
header ("Content-Type: text/Calendar"); 
header ("Content-Disposition: inline; filename=iCalendar.ics"); 
exit; 
?>
```

#3 / Nov 19, 2010 7:31am

Social Spark

11 posts

Thanks for that John. That got me half way - the file was recognised at ics by different browsers but my calendar said it was unreadable. But I tracked down a solution - wrapping the whole thing in php. Here’s the working template in case it’s useful for anyone else:

<?php 
$ical = "BEGIN:VCALENDAR
X-WR-TIMEZONE:Europe/London
PRODID:-//False Economy//NONSGML v1.0//EN
CALSCALE:GREGORIAN
X-WR-CALNAME:False Economy
VERSION:2.0
{exp:channel:entries channel="events" show_future_entries="yes" disable="member_data|pagination|categories" limit="1"}BEGIN:VEVENT
UID:{entry_id}-falseeconomy
URL;VALUE=URI:http://falseeconomy.org.uk/campaigns/event/{url_title}
DTSTAMP:{entry_date format="%Y%m%dT%H%i%sZ"}
DTSTART:{entry_date format="%Y%m%dT%H%i%sZ"}
DTEND:{entry_date format="%Y%m%dT%H%i%sZ"}
LOCATION:{evestreet1}, {evetown} {evepost1} {evepost2}
SUMMARY:{title}
END:VEVENT{/exp:channel:entries}
END:VCALENDAR";

//set correct content-type-header
header('Content-type: text/calendar; charset=utf-8');
header('Content-Disposition: inline; filename=calendar.ics');
echo $ical;
exit;
?>

#4 / Nov 19, 2010 11:24am

Ingmar
29245 posts

Thanks for sharing your solution with us. Please post again as needed.

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