How to get the right format / url for events at ical and google

[Bill]

Waiting to be able to download plugin and license I have a few questions about how to obtain the correct url for ical, google events.

for instance at contra costa county web site you can click on a link and download the ics. Do I just import the ics downloaded for each section per video?

looking at the source I see This URL

would I ever need to copy and paste such a monster into the import form?

And for events that are at google, how does one get to the URL to use, for instance This Google Calendar

either as single event or ongoing.

I think it would help to provide more examples of how to obtain correct URLs once beyond the .ics file

[Barry]

Hi Bill,

Thanks for getting in touch.

In summary, any URL that leads to a valid ICS/iCal format feed can be used 🙂

To take your Contra Costa County example, what you might do (exact steps will vary according to what browser/device you are using, but this should give you the basic idea) you would right click and copy the address of URL – then provide that to the importer.

So, yes, you’d paste that URL in even if it does look a little monstrous 😉

And for events that are at google, how does one get to the URL to use, for instance This Google Calendar

You’d need to discover the iCal URL for that calendar. I can’t find it on the page you linked to, but Google’s own docs suggest it’s possible:

support.google.com/calendar/answer/37103

Does that help?

[Bill]

Still having issues

From this page http://www.co.contra-costa.ca.us/iCalendar.aspx

I looked at page source and copied this URL

main calendar
http://www.co.contra-costa.ca.us/common/modules/iCalendar/iCalendar.aspx?catID=87&feed=calendar

single subject calendar
http://www.co.contra-costa.ca.us/common/modules/iCalendar/iCalendar.aspx?catID=90&feed=calendar

I enter ical url from esp.
webcal://espn.go.com/travel/sports/calendar/export/espnCal?teams=6_23

I also changed webcam to http and

everything above produces

no ical url found

I think there needs to be much better explanation about this given the variety of urls that purport to be ical urls and why importer does not recognize them and how to find or edit them so it does.

[Bill]

more examples that don’t load

downloaded from link marked as + export listed event

http://contracostafair.com/event/gun-show-2/

https://www.google.com/calendar/render?action=TEMPLATE&text=Billetproof+Car+Show&dates=20150919T060000/20150919T180000&details&location=1201+West+10th+Street,+Antioch,+CA,+94531,+United+States&sprop=website:http://contracostafair.com&trp=false&pli=1&sf=true&output=xml#eventpage_6

it feels like in the wild every site implements ical downloads in a proprietary roll-your-own kind of way that your net (importer) can’t catch those fish.

[Barry]

Hi Bill,

To take the first URL you shared:

http://www.co.contra-costa.ca.us/common/modules/iCalendar/iCalendar.aspx?catID=87&feed=calendar

The contents of this are as follows:

BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
PRODID:iCalendar-Ruby
END:VCALENDAR

So it’s got the beginnings of an iCal feed but is incomplete and not valid by itself. Unfortunately, there’s not too much we can do to control external sources.

http://www.co.contra-costa.ca.us/common/modules/iCalendar/iCalendar.aspx?catID=90&feed=calendar

For this second URL, at least at the point in time where I visited it (it could of course have contained something else when you last accessed it) it was a valid iCal feed with three events in it, which I had no problem importing:

I’m not sure why you experienced something other than this unless it was indeed populated with some other content – perhaps it was empty like the first feed – when you accessed it.

It’s also possible you were up against some kind of conflict – what I would suggest is trying this particular feed again, and if you hit the same problem we can explore testing for conflicts.

For the third URL you provided:

webcal://espn.go.com/travel/sports/calendar/export/espnCal?teams=6_23

I also experience problems – but not only through iCal Importer. Other online and local calendar tools I would expect to understand this – were it valid – do not work. Might the problem be with the feed itself in this case also? Where did you originally find the link for this?

[Bill]

did you try the google cal link. above you instructed to copy the “monstrous link”

https://www.google.com/calendar/render?action=TEMPLATE&text=Billetproof+Car+Show&dates=20150919T060000/20150919T180000&details&location=1201+West+10th+Street,+Antioch,+CA,+94531,+United+States&sprop=website:http://contracostafair.com&trp=false&pli=1&sf=true&output=xml#eventpage_6

the espn link was from right click of export calendar at

http://espn.go.com/nfl/team/schedule/_/name/pit/pittsburgh-steelers

I have asked county website guys to advise their aspx for ical and how a standard url can be gleaned from that format

it’s pretty wild out there.

May be show some examples that do work and clue as to what to look for in what a ics or google calendar URL should look like so third parties can address these issues.

[Barry]

Hi Bill,

I think you must have posted the “monstrous link” while I was still typing my last reply, so I didn’t see it – apologies!

In any case:

Your Google URL – this simply leads to a Google Calendar page, it isn’t iCal data and so it won’t be accepted by itself. Were you trying to highlight some other URL that can be found within it?

Gun Show 2 – this event provides the following iCal URL – http://contracostafair.com/event/gun-show-2/?ical=1&tribe_display= – and I have no problem importing with this. What error are you finding here and which URL exactly are you providing to the importer?

Pittsburgh Steelers – whether I or a colleague test on Apple devices with the actual iCal app or we otherwise inspect the calendar URLs on this page, something is amiss and it doesn’t seem to behave quite as you would expect. They are either devoid of any events or else are mal-formatted, or perhaps both of those things.

To summarize: I appreciate this may be frustrating, but I’m not sure there is much more we can or should do. Many of the URLs you’ve provided have either had no event data, malformed data or just aren’t pointing to iCal feeds.

One or two have been valid, however, and work as expected.

[Bill]

I still have had no success in importing any events.

1. above in the gun show example why would the url include ?ical=1&tribe_display=

2. from Meetup I entered the ical info provided for a group there.

webcal://www.meetup.com/Keiretsu-Forum-East-Bay/events/ical/

I have tried http: but still no luck.

“no ical found at this url”

• This reply was modified 8 years, 9 months ago by Bill.

[Bill]

http://www.co.contra-costa.ca.us/common/modules/iCalendar/iCalendar.aspx?catID=90&feed=calendar

For this second URL, at least at the point in time where I visited it (it could of course have contained something else when you last accessed it) it was a valid iCal feed with three events in it, which I had no problem importing:

This still produces no ical import for me

I need to go back to docs as I must be missing something.

[Barry]

Hi Bill,

So I’m not sure why you’re experiencing these problems: as you point out, the last URL you shared contains 3 valid events. However, where I was able to import it without any difficulties it sounds like you were not.

Similarly, the Meetup.com webcal URL you shared works as expected when I test it. So, whatever the problem, it does sound like it is specific to your site (it’s possible there is some sort of conflict at work for you locally, or perhaps it is even an issue stemming from your hosting environment).

Let’s try to rule out the possibility of a theme/plugin conflict first of all – can you run through these steps?

[Bill]

This reply is private.

[Bill]

This reply is private.

[Barry]

Hi Bill,

I would struggle to help you formulate a question to your local ISP as I really doubt that’s at the heart of the issue.

I do think our standard conflict testing steps are worth trying, however, though I appreciate you would be reluctant to do this on a live site. Perhaps you have a test/staging site you could use?

Similarly, I would shy away from posing a question to W3TC until you’ve completed those steps. If they indicate that the problem is with W3TC then we can re-eavaluate at that point, but right now we just don’t know.

[Bill]

This reply is private.

[Barry]

Hi Bill,

I’m sorry for the continued difficulties – that’s pretty puzzling.

To clarify, though, it would still be worth deactivating W3TC just as you would with any other plugin when testing for conflicts – as it too could be a source of this problem (to be clear, all I meant in my last reply was that there was no need to actually send them a support request until/if you identify it as being a problem).

Please also note that – though we’d love to get this up and running – if it is proving to be too troublesome for any reason on your own installation you are probably still within the refund window (and you could simply email us at support [at] theeventscalendar [dot] com with a copy of your purchase receipt to request that).

Naturally we don’t want to lose you and would rather find the answer to the problem, but I did want to make the offer 🙂

[Author]

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