recurring-ical-events 0.1.19b0

A Python module which repeats ICalendar events by RRULE, RDATE and EXDATE.

ICal has some complexity to it: Events can be repeated, removed from the feed and edited later on. This tool takes care of these circumstances.

Let’s put our expertise together and build a tool that can solve this!

• day light saving time (DONE)
• recurring events (DONE)
• recurring events with edits (DONE)
• recurring events where events are omitted (DONE)
• recurring events events where the edit took place later (DONE)
• normal events (DONE)
• recurrence of dates but not hours, minutes, and smaller (DONE)
• endless recurrence (DONE)
• ending recurrence (DONE)
• events with start date and no end date (DONE)
• events with start as date and start as datetime (DONE)
• RRULE (DONE)
• RDATE (DONE)
• DURATION (DONE)
• EXDATE (DONE)

Not included:

• EXRULE (deprecated), see 8.3.2. Properties Registry

Installation

pip install recurring-ical-events

Example

import icalendar
import recurring_ical_events
import urllib.request

start_date = (2019, 3, 5)
end_date =   (2019, 4, 1)
url = "http://tinyurl.com/y24m3r8f"

ical_string = urllib.request.urlopen(url).read()
calendar = icalendar.Calendar.from_ical(ical_string)
events = recurring_ical_events.of(calendar).between(start_date, end_date)
for event in events:
    start = event["DTSTART"].dt
    duration = event["DTEND"].dt - event["DTSTART"].dt
    print("start {} duration {}".format(start, duration))

Output:

start 2019-03-18 04:00:00+01:00 duration 1:00:00
start 2019-03-20 04:00:00+01:00 duration 1:00:00
start 2019-03-19 04:00:00+01:00 duration 1:00:00
start 2019-03-07 02:00:00+01:00 duration 1:00:00
start 2019-03-08 01:00:00+01:00 duration 2:00:00
start 2019-03-09 03:00:00+01:00 duration 0:30:00
start 2019-03-10 duration 1 day, 0:00:00

Usage

The icalendar module is responsible for parsing and converting calendars. The recurring_ical_events module uses such a calendar and creates all repetitions of its events within a time span.

To import this module, write

import recurring_ical_events

There are several methods you can use to unfold repeating events, such as at(a_time) and between(a_start, an_end).

at(a_date)

You can get all events which take place at a_date. A date can be a year, e.g. 2023, a month of a year e.g. January in 2023 (2023, 1), a day of a certain month e.g. (2023, 1, 1), an hour e.g. (2023, 1, 1, 0), a minute e.g. (2023, 1, 1, 0, 0), or second as well as a datetime.date object and datetime.datetime.

The start and end are inclusive. As an example: if an event is longer than one day it is still included if it takes place at a_date.

a_date = 2023 # a year
a_date = (2023, 1) # January in 2023
a_date = (2023, 1, 1) # the 1st of January in 2023
a_date = (2023, 1, 1, 0) # the first hour of the year 2023
a_date = (2023, 1, 1, 0, 0) # the first minute in 2023
a_date = datetime.date(2023) # the first day in 2023
a_date = datetime.date(2023, 1, 1) # the first day in 2023

events = recurring_ical_events.of(an_icalendar_object).at(a_date)

The resulting events are a list of icalendar events, see below.

between(start, end)

between(start, end) returns all events happening between a start and an end time. Both arguments can be datetime.datetime, datetime.date, tuples of numbers passed as arguments to datetime.datetime or strings in the form of %Y%m%d (yyyymmdd) and %Y%m%dT%H%M%SZ (yyyymmddThhmmssZ). For examples, see at(a_date) above.

events = recurring_ical_events.of(an_icalendar_object).between(start, end)

The resulting events are in a list, see below.

events as list

The result of both between(start, end) and at(a_date) is a list of icalendar events. By default, all attributes of the event with repetitions are copied, like UID and SUMMARY. However, these attributes may differ from the source event:

• DTSTART which is the start of the event instance.
• DTEND which is the end of the event instance.
• RDATE, EXDATE, RRULE are the rules to create event repetitions. They are not included in repeated events, see Issue 23.

Development

1. Optional: Install virtualenv and Python3 and create a virtual environment.

   virtualenv -p python3 ENV
   source ENV/bin/activate
   

2. Install the packages.

   pip install -r requirements.txt -r test-requirements.txt
   

3. Run the tests

   pytest
   

To release new versions,

1. edit the Changelog Section

2. edit setup.py, the __version__ variable

3. create a commit and push it

4. run

   python3 setup.py tag_and_deploy
   

5. notify the issues about their release

Testing

This project’s development is driven by tests. You can view the tests in the test folder. If you have a calendar ICS file for which this library does not generate the desired output, you can add it to the test/calendars folder and write tests for what you expect. If you like, open an issue first, e.g. to discuss the changes and how to go about it.

Changelog

• v0.1.19b

  • Benchmark using @mrx23dot’s script and speed up recurrence calculation by factor 4, see Issue 42.

• v0.1.18b

  • Handle Issue 28 so that EXDATEs match as expected.
  • Handle Issue 27 so that parsing some rrule UNTIL values does not crash.

• v0.1.17b

  • Handle Issue 28 where passed arguments lead to errors where it is expected to work.

• v0.1.16b

  • Events with an empty RRULE are handled like events without an RRULE.
  • Remove fixed dependency versions, see Issue 14

• v0.1.15b

  • Repeated events also include subcomponents. Issue 6

• v0.1.14b

  • Fix compatibility issue 20: EXDATEs of different time zones are now supported.

• v0.1.13b

  • Remove attributes RDATE, EXDATE, RRULE from repeated events Issue 23
  • Use vDDDTypes instead of explicit date/datetime type Pull Request 19
  • Start Changelog

Libraries Used

• python-dateutil - to compute the recurrences of events using rrule
• icalendar - the library used to parse ICS files
• pytz - for timezones

Related Projects

• icalevents - another library for roughly the same use-case
• Open Web Calendar - a web calendar to embed into websites which uses this library

Research

• RFC 5545
• Stackoverflow question this is created for
• https://github.com/oberron/annum - https://stackoverflow.com/questions/28829261/python-ical-get-events-for-a-day-including-recurring-ones#28829401
• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/20268204/ical-get-date-from-recurring-event-by-rrule-and-dtstart
• https://github.com/collective/icalendar/issues/162
• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/46471852/ical-parsing-reoccuring-events-in-python

• RDATE https://stackoverflow.com/a/46709850/1320237

  • https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5545#section-3.8.5.2