Getting SabreDAV to work with Google Calendar 'Add url' facility

[murray]

Hi folks

Back again.  I have my SabreDAV enabled server happily sending events to iPhones.  It's working well.

Next question is how to get my events from my SabreDAV-enabled-server appearing on my Google Calendar.  I've explored Google Calendar extensively and they only appear to have an 'Add url' option for pulling in events from an external dynamic source.  So I searched through the Google calendar help and it only indicates that the URL points to some calendar (iCal format).

From searching on this forum it would appear other people have managed to get this working but I'm not sure what format the URL is going to take.

a) My server currently requires authentication and the 'Add URL' option does not provide for a username / password option for authentication.  So I'm thinking this must be some sort of public access or perhaps it's using my google account for digest authentication... do you know which it is??

b) I tried adding sobs.com.au:80/Sabre/calendarserver.php/principals/murray@schoolid=15 but Google returns a message indicating this is an invalid URL.  But it never actually checks it against the server (AFAIK)  Why is this invalid?

So the prompt says: "If you know the address to a calendar (in ical format), you can type the address here."  It doesn't say what to do if you don't know the correct address... ;-)

Has anybody else had any success with this option and what format of URL did you finally arrive at?

Cheers
Murray

[murray]

Always sad when you start replying to your own posts... :-(

I've been looking more at the "Add url" function and it appears to be similar in terminology to the "Calendar subscription" idea.   When I try this the client app appears to be sending an http "GET" request, and having a PDO implementation means I'm not having a lot of fun...it's not valid unless the base calendar structure is of a file type.  Is there an equivalent of the 'Calendar subscription' idea in the SabreDAV PDO implenentation???

Cheers
Murray

[Evert Pot]

Use this plugin:

https://code.google.com/p/sabredav/wiki/ICSExportPlugin

[Ingo Ratsdorf]

Hi Murray,

I tried this some time ago with other calendar sources and at least at the time (about a year ago) this would not work because of the way GOOGLE handles this feature::

-It is rather an "import" function and fails to update dynamic ICS files
-Google did not seem to ever update anything or reload or check for new version
-You cannot set an update interval either

This failed miserably for me.
Please read the various post about this in the net. You will find this failed for everybody.

Google is not interested in communicating with the outside world because they want you to use their software. Even commercial customers seem to be quite upset about
that. Their caldav implementation is not too good either. I moved away from Google for exactly that reason and I am hosting now everything on my own server. Works lightyears
better.

Cheers,
Ingo

[murray]

Hi Ingo

Yes, I did read a number of complaints about these URLs not auto-refreshing, however most of those posts were pre 2011 and I wondered whether Google was now refreshing these links...  

Has anybody tested this recently?

Cheers
Murray

[Ingo Ratsdorf]

Hi.

Just tried it again and it just does not work.

Auth is not supported. Google does not ask and fails. If you enter as part of URL, then you get "malformed URL".

And who want to pass auth info to google in plain text?

Then google came up with "robots.txt is prohibiting us from spidering that url". Who wanted google to spider anything?

I ended up with no display whatsoever.

Cheers,

Ingo

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[murray]

Hi folks - just wanted to let you know how this finished off.  I now have a CalDAV URL that uses digest authentication to retrieve a specific users events from my server.  I also have an HTTP URL that has no authentication and retrieves public events from my server - I use this with calendar apps that use a 'subscriber' model.

Google Calendar currently uses the 'subscriber' model and it does work, however it only refreshes every 12 hours approximately.  Patience is a good thing.

Cheers
Murray

[Arnaud]

Hi Murray,

Would you be kind enough to elaborate on how you modified SabreDAV to
provide a 'subscriber' model? Are you using the ics extension? What
classes did you have to over-ride to achieve that. If you had some
code you wished to share, that would be awesome!

I am trying to do something similar (prodiding a "your public
calendar" url to my cusotmers). Thanks!

Arnaud,

[Murray Collingwood]

Hi Arnaud

I'm using the PDO (database backend) but I'm sure it would work with the normal stuff. 
This is the URL I use:
http://my.web.site/Sabre/s2.php/calendars/public/events?export

I'm pretty sure the "?export" was important... but that could be related to the PDO stuff...

Cheers
Murray

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Murray Collingwood
Focus Computing
ph +61 7 3175 0575
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http://www.focus-computing.com.au