iCal Events

FAQ

How can I control the output of this plugin?

The display_events function takes the following arguments:

• url: The URL of the iCalendar file.
• gmt_start (optional): Only events from this time forward are displayed. If not specified, the earliest events are displayed.
• gmt_end (optional): Only events before this time are displayed.
• limit (optional): The maximum number of events to display.
• date_format (optional): The format string used to format dates (see strftime documentation). Default: %a %b %e.
• time_format (optional): The format string used to format times. Default: %l:%M %p.
• before (optional): HTML or text to display before each event. Default: HTML li start tag.
• after (optional): HTML or text to display after each event. Default: HTML li end tag.
• before_date (optional): HTML or text to display before each event’s date. Default: HTML strong start tag.
• after_date (optional): HTML or text to display after each event’s date. Default: HTML strong end tag followed by : (colon and space).
• use_summary (optional): Whether or not to use the event summary in the output. Default: true.
• before_summary (optional): HTML or text to display before each event’s summary. Default: Empty string.
• after_summary (optional): HTML or text to display after each event’s summary. Default: Empty string.
• use_description (optional): Whether or not to use the event description in the output. Default: true.
• before_description (optional): HTML or text to display before each event’s description. Default: -.
• after_description (optional): HTML or text to display after each event’s description. Default: Empty string.
• replace_newlines_with (optional): String with which to replace newlines in the description. Default: HTML br tag.
• use_location (optional): Whether or not to use the event location in the output. If false, only the summary is used. Default: true.
• before_location (optional): HTML or text to display before each event’s location. Default: (.
• after_location (optional): HTML or text to display after each event’s location. Default: ).
• use_url (optional): Whether or not to use the event URL in the output. If true, the event URL is made into a link around the event summary. Default: true.
• echo (optional): Whether or not to directly display the events. Default: true.

For example, if you want to hide the description and location, you could use something like the following:

<?php ICalEvents::display_events('url=http://www.ufl.edu/calendar/ufCalendar.ics&limit=3&use_description=0&use_location=0&gmt_start=' . time()); ?>

If you need more control over the output, use the get_events function, which takes the following arguments:

• url: The URL of the iCalendar file.
• gmt_start (optional): Only events from this time forward are displayed. If not specified, the earliest events are displayed.
• gmt_end (optional): Only events before this time are displayed.
• limit (optional): The maximum number of events to display.

The function returns an array of events, as parsed by import_ical.php. For example usage, refer to the display_events function in the plugin.

How often is the calendar checked for new events?

Once a day. You can change this using the ICAL_EVENTS_CACHE_TTL (time to live) near the top of the plugin to the desired number of seconds in between checks. For example, to load events every hour, use the following:

define('ICAL_EVENTS_CACHE_TTL', 3600);

Loading calendars too frequently can get your server banned, so use your best judgment when setting this value.

Why aren’t my events showing up correctly?

This plugin makes an attempt to support as many event definitions that follow the iCalendar specification (RFC 2445) as possible. However, not all recurrence rules are implemented in the parser. There may also be bugs in how the plugin interprets the parsed data.

If an event is showing up correctly in your calendar application (iCal, Google Calendar) but not on your blog, try turning on debugging:

define('ICAL_EVENTS_DEBUG', true);

Put that line above the line in the plugin that reads:

if (! defined('ICAL_EVENTS_DEBUG')) define('ICAL_EVENTS_DEBUG', false);

Now reload your blog. You may see various lines about unsupported iCal values; if this is the case, and you’re interested in getting it fixed, take a look at the import_ical.php file.

Where can I find iCalendar files?

There are many iCalendar sources, such as:

• Apple’s iCal library
• iCalShare
• Google Calendar

My server does not support `fopen` on URLs. Can I still use this plugin?

As of version 1.9, this plugin supports usage of cURL via WordPress’ wp_remote_fopen function. Previous versions required the url-cache plugin for cURL support, but this is no longer the case.

The calendar I loaded is broken or didn’t load completely; what can I do?

If you are an administrator of your WordPress site, you can force the plugin to reload it. Just add ?ical_events_reload=1 to the end of the URL (or &ical_events_reload=1 if the URL already contains a question mark).

Note: Your user account must have the activate_plugins role for this to work.

The text comes out garbled or looks encoded incorrectly. How do I fix this?

As of version 1.13, you can explicitly set the calendar’s character set for conversion to HTML:

ICalEvents::display_events('url=...&charset=EUC-JP');

The conversion defaults to your blog’s character set, which is usually UTF-8. The supported character sets are listed in the htmlentities documentation.