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Synchronizing events beetween calendar systems is hard. iCal may be a serialization format, but it doesn't handle things like: sync event from system A to syste
by dexwiz 5y ago
Synchronizing events beetween calendar systems is hard. iCal may be a serialization format, but it doesn't handle things like: sync event from system A to system B, update in System B, how do we tell System A? For simple events with no attendees that is easy. But once you deal with recurring events, and everyone's varying implementations, it quickly falls apart.
Internally all the major Calendar services (GCal and Outlook), store events differently when it comes to events with multiple attendees and recurring events, and it takes understanding the varying nuances to perform good synchronization. Even the difference between a timed event and an all day event will vary from system to system. And that barely touches the timezone issues that arise when scheduling.
- dboreham 5y agoHaving spend 1/2 lifetime doing this: yes++ Add to all that : the calendaring hosting providers will block your API access to their customers so unless you have a business relationship with them, or the technical solution means that they can't block you, it's a crappy business proposition.
- mercutio2 5y agoThe iCalendar RFC doesn’t specify this, but the CalDAV specs work just fine. It’s not trivial, but it’s also not especially difficult to implement. There sure are a lot of productive implementations of clients and servers out there! Admittedly scheduling is hard, and frankly the iTIP model is just not that well suited to most people’s lives.