NAME

iCal::Parser - Parse iCalendar files into a data structure

SYNOPSIS

  use iCal::Parser

  my $parser=iCal::Parser->new();
  my $hash=$parser->parse($file);

  $parser->parse($another_file);
  my $combined=$parser->calendar;

  my $combined=iCal::Parser->new->parse(@files);
  my $combined=iCal::Parser->new->parse_files(@files);
  my $combined=iCal::Parser->new->parse_strings(@strings);

DESCRIPTION

This module processes iCalendar (vCalendar 2.0) files as specified in RFC 2445 into a data structure. It handles recurrences (RRULEs), exclusions (EXDATEs), event updates (events with a RECURRENCE-ID), and nested data structures (ATTENDEES and VALARMs). It currently ignores the VTIMEZONE, VJOURNAL and VFREEBUSY entry types.

The data structure returned is a hash like the following:

    {
      calendars=>[\%cal, ...],
      events=>{yyyy=>{mm=>{dd}=>{UID=>\%event}}
      todos=>[\%todo, ...]
    }

That is, it contains an array of calendar hashes, a hash of events key by year=>month=>day=>eventUID, and an array of todos.

Calendars, events and todos are ``rolled up'' version os the hashes returned from the Text::vFile::asData manpage, with dates replaced by DateTime objects.

During parsing, events in the input calendar are expanded out into multiple events, one per day covered by the event, as follows:

hour

allday

1

RRULE

allday

RECURRENCE-ID

An example of each hash is below.

Calendar Hash

    {
        'X-WR-CALNAME' => 'Test',
        'index' => 1,
        'X-WR-RELCALID' => '7CCE8555-3516-11D9-8A43-000D93C45D90',
        'PRODID' => '-//Apple Computer\\, Inc//iCal 1.5//EN',
        'CALSCALE' => 'GREGORIAN',
        'X-WR-TIMEZONE' => 'America/New_York',
        'X-WR-CALDESC' => 'My Test Calendar',
        'VERSION' => '2.0'
    }

Event Hash

Note that hours and allday are mutually exclusive in the actual data. The idref field contains the id of the calendar the event came from, which is useful if the hash was created from multiple calendars.

    {
        'SUMMARY' => 'overnight',
        'hours' => '15.00',
        'allday' => 1,
        'UID' => '95CCBF98-3685-11D9-8CA5-000D93C45D90',
        'idref' => '7CCE8555-3516-11D9-8A43-000D93C45D90',
        'DTSTAMP' => \%DateTime,
        'DTEND' => \%DateTime,
        'DTSTART' => \%DateTime
        'ATTENDEE' => [
           {
              'CN' => 'Jay',
              'value' => 'mailto:jayl@my.server'
           },
          ],
          'VALARM' => [
            {
              'when' => \%DateTime,
              'SUMMARY' => 'Alarm notification',
              'ACTION' => 'EMAIL',
              'DESCRIPTION' => 'This is an event reminder',
              'ATTENDEE' => [
                 {
                   'value' => 'mailto:cpan@my.server'
                 }
              ]
           }
         ],
    }

Todo Hash

    {
        'URL' => 'mailto:me',
        'SUMMARY' => 'todo 1',
        'UID' => 'B78E68F2-35E7-11D9-9E64-000D93C45D90',
        'idref' => '7CCE8555-3516-11D9-8A43-000D93C45D90',
        'STATUS' => 'COMPLETED',
        'COMPLETED' => \%DateTime,
        'DTSTAMP' => \%DateTime,
        'PRIORITY' => '9',
        'DTSTART' => \%DateTime,
        'DUE' => \%DateTime,
        'DESCRIPTION' => 'not much',
        'VALARM' => [
           {
              'when' => \%DateTime,
              'ATTACH' => 'file://localhost/my-file',
              'ACTION' => 'PROCEDURE'
           }
        ],
    },

Methods

`new(%opt_args)`

Optional Arguments

start {yyymmdd|DateTime}: Only include events on or after yyymmdd. Defaults to Jan of this year.
end {yyyymmdd|DateTime}: Only include events before yyymmdd.
no_events: Don't include events in the output (todos only).
no_todos: Don't include todos in the output (events only).
months n: the DateTime::Set manpages (used for calculating recurrences) are limited to approximately 200 entries. If an end date is not specified, the to date is set to the start date plus this many months. The default is 60.
tz string: Use tz as timezone for date values. The default is 'local', which will adjust the parsed dates to the current timezone.
debug: Set to non-zero for some debugging output during processing.