Calendar still causing events to duplicate

[Chris]

Hi,

It appears that the most recent release did fix most of the issues with the duplicating events. However, it looks like I still have a feed that continues upon import, to duplicate the events instead of overwriting them.

I have removed the feed, deleted all the events, deleted the event category. Set it all back up again after the update and then re-imported the feed. It’s still happening.

I see the error on this page (at the time of viewing, you may not see the duplicates, as I’ve likely cleared them out): http://schools.graniteschools.org/skylinehigh/calendar/
You can see the source calendar here: https://outlook.office365.com/owa/calendar/[email protected]/cd10a500253f444d8773476b4225c9ca5044474517216195048/calendar.html
You can subscribe to the feed here: https://outlook.office365.com/owa/calendar/[email protected]/cd10a500253f444d8773476b4225c9ca5044474517216195048/calendar.ics

Do you have suggestions? What can be done at this point?

[Victor]

Hi Chris!

I’m sorry you are still getting those duplicate events.

Having a closer look at your system information I can see you are still using a previous version of The Events Calendar. Please update to the latest version 4.5.11 and see if you still experience the issue.

If you don’t see the update notification, try going to the wp-admin > Dashboard > Updates and click “Check Again”. If you still don’t see it, you can always perform a manual update > https://theeventscalendar.com/knowledgebase/manual-updates/

Let us know how that goes.

Thanks,
Victor

[Chris]

It appears that last night it did not import duplicates after the update. I want to keep this ticket open though until tomorrow so I can verify once again and be sure it wasn’t a fluke.

Thanks.

[Victor]

Sure Chris! Please keep us posted about it.

[Chris]

Alright, so it appears that some events were duplicated in last night’s automatic import. You can see an example of that here:

http://schools.graniteschools.org/skylinehigh/calendar/2017-09-01/

I’m also noticing that some events that span multiple days are being shifted one day into the future, instead of actually starting on the day they’re supposed to. (See Homecoming Week event as an example). I’m not sure if these two issues are related or not.

[Victor]

Hi Chris,

Thanks for following up with this and for sharing the link as an example.

After some tests I could reproduce the issue. It seems that every time you request the calendar feed we get a different UID and start timestamp for the same events, so that might be probably the cause of this.

I have reached out to one of our developers to have a look at this and see if there is anything that we can do on our side.

I will get back to you when I have news. Please hang in there.

Thanks,
Victor

[Victor]

Hi Chris,

Thanks for your patience.

After investigating this a bit more we arrived to the following conclusion:

If the source feed provides a different UID (Unique and persistent IDentifier) each time for the same event there is little we can do; the standard is that the UID is what you can rely on to distinguish and track events across time and changes.

I’m sorry I can’t be of much help with this, but there is not much we can do when the source feed does not comply with a standard (see https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5545#section-3.8.4.7)

Don’t hesitate to ask any other question and I’d be happy to help as much possible.

Best,
Victor

[Support Droid]

Hey there! This thread has been pretty quiet for the last three weeks, so we’re going to go ahead and close it to avoid confusion with other topics. If you’re still looking for help with this, please do open a new thread, reference this one and we’d be more than happy to continue the conversation over there.

Thanks so much!
The Events Calendar Support Team

[Author]

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