Quick Start

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Quick Start

This quick start guide will show you the basics of how to read and write iCalendar objects using biweekly. We will be using the Biweekly class to do this. This class contains a collection of static factory methods that use method chaining to simplify the reading/writing process.

1 Reading an iCalendar object

Call the Biweekly.parse() method to parse an iCalendar object. The iCalendar object can be parsed from a String, File, InputStream, or Reader.

String str =
"BEGIN:VCALENDAR\r\n" +
  "VERSION:2.0\r\n" +
  "PRODID:-//Microsoft Corporation//Outlook 14.0 MIMEDIR//EN\r\n" +
  "BEGIN:VEVENT\r\n" +
    "UID:0123\r\n" +
    "DTSTAMP:20130601T080000Z\r\n" +
    "SUMMARY;LANGUAGE=en-us:Team Meeting\r\n" +
    "DTSTART:20130610T120000Z\r\n" +
    "RRULE:FREQ=WEEKLY;INTERVAL=2\r\n" +
  "END:VEVENT\r\n" +
"END:VCALENDAR\r\n";

//parse the first iCalendar object from the data stream
ICalendar ical = Biweekly.parse(str).first();

//or parse all objects from the data stream 
//List<ICalendar> icals = Biweekly.parse(str).all();

VEvent event = ical.getEvents().get(0);
String summary = event.getSummary().getValue();

2 Writing an iCalendar object

To create a new iCalendar object, simply create a new instance of the ICalendar class, and populate it with data. Then, pass it into the Biweekly.write() method, and call go(). The iCalendar object can be written to a String, File, OutputStream, or Writer.

ICalendar ical = new ICalendar();

VEvent event = new VEvent();

Summary summary = event.setSummary("Yearly Conference");
summary.setLanguage("en-us");

Date start = ...
event.setDateStart(new DateStart(start, false));
event.setDuration(new Duration.Builder().days(1).builder()); //all-day event

Recurrence recur = new Recurrence.Builder(Frequency.YEARLY).build();
event.setRecurrenceRule(recur);

ical.addEvent(event);

File file = new File("conference.ics");
Biweekly.write(ical).go(file);

3 Validating an ICalendar object

To help ensure that data within an ICalendar Java object properly adheres to the iCalendar specifications, the validate() method can be called. This method returns a list of warnings, alerting the developer to such things as required fields being missing (such as the ACTION property in a VALARM component) or other data inconsistencies (such as the date in a DTSTART property coming after the date in a DTEND property).

The presence of validation warnings will not prevent the ICalendar object from being written out to a data stream (a syntactically-correct iCalendar object will still be produced). However, the application that consumes the iCalendar object may have trouble interpreting some of the data, due to the presence of these warnings.

DateFormat df = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm");
ICalendar ical = new ICalendar();
VEvent event = new VEvent();
event.setDateStart(df.parse("2013-07-15 13:00"));
event.setDateEnd(df.parse("2013-07-15 11:00"));
ical.addEvent(event);

ValidationWarnings warnings = ical.validate();
System.out.println(warnings.toString());
//produces this warning:
//[ICalendar > VEvent]: DateStart must come before DateEnd.

[jithesh chandra n]

Hi i am a newbie here ,I need to save and retrieve the recurrences into a database like mysql, can someone help .