IPS4 Calendar Feature Request: Advanced Recurrence Options

[Willrune]

I opened a ticket to find that the feature I am looking for does not exist in IPS4, but was encouraged to make a post in the feedback forums. First I will provide some of the exchange, and then I will outline what I'd like to see.

 

Me:

Id like to be able to account for a few countries and religions since this community has people from all over. I would manually create events that repeat, but not all holidays repeat on a specific day number of a given month. Some happen on:

• the (1st || 2nd || 3rd || 4th || last || 2nd to last || etc...) (Monday || Tuesday || etc...) of the month.
• Some holidays are relative to another holiday/specific date
• Some religious days are more complex

Examples:

• New Year's Day falls on January 1 and marks the start of a new year according to the Gregorian calendar.
• Martin Luther King Day is a federal holiday held on the third Monday of January
• Groundhog Day falls on February 2 in the United States
• Valentine's Day is celebrated on February 14
• Washington's Birthday, also known as Presidents' Day, is a federal holiday held on the third Monday of February
• Ash Wednesday, a day of fasting, is the first day of Lent in Western Christianity. It occurs 46 days (40 fasting days, if the 6 Sundays, which are not days of fast, are excluded) before Easter and can fall as early as 4 February or as late as 10 March.
• Many Christians in the United States remember Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, which marks the beginning of Holy Week. This day is also on the Sunday before Easter Sunday.
• Good Friday occurs two days before Easter Sunday in the United States.
• Many Christians celebrate Jesus Christ's resurrection on Easter Sunday. The Easter date depends on the ecclesiastical approximation of the March equinox. (http://www.timeanddate.com/calendar/determining-easter-date.html)
• Cinco de Mayo is annually observed on May 5. It celebrates the defeat of the French army during the Battle of Puebla (Batalla de Puebla) in Mexico on May 5, 1862
• Mother's Day in the United States is annually held on the second Sunday of May
• Memorial Day is observed on the last Monday of May
• Father's Day in the United States is on the third Sunday of June
• Independence Day is annually celebrated on July 4 and is often known as "the Fourth of July"
• Labor Day is annually held on the first Monday of September
• Patriot Day is an annual observance on September 11 to remember those who were injured or died during the terrorist attacks in the United States on September 11, 2001
• Thanksgiving Day in the United States is a holiday on the fourth Thursday of November
• Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving Day and the Friday before Cyber Monday in the United States
• Christmas Eve in the United States, which is annually on December 24
• Many people in the United States celebrate Christmas Day on December 25
• New Year's Eve, which is on December 31, is the last day of the year in the United States.

 

The information about Easter came from Wikipedia, everything else was found on timeanddate.com

 

Me

RFC5545: Internet Calendaring and Scheduling Core Object Specification
(iCalendar)

(via recurr?)

See: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5545#section-3.3.10 

EXDATE: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5545#section-3.8.5.1
EXRULE was deprecated by RFC 5545
RDATE: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5545#section-3.8.5.2
RRULE: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5545#section-3.8.5.3

/*
3.3.10.  Recurrence Rule

      The BYDAY rule part specifies a COMMA-separated list of days of
      the week; SU indicates Sunday; MO indicates Monday; TU indicates
      Tuesday; WE indicates Wednesday; TH indicates Thursday; FR
      indicates Friday; and SA indicates Saturday.

      Each BYDAY value can also be preceded by a positive (+n) or
      negative (-n) integer.  If present, this indicates the nth
      occurrence of a specific day within the MONTHLY or YEARLY "RRULE".

      For example, within a MONTHLY rule, +1MO (or simply 1MO)
      represents the first Monday within the month, whereas -1MO
      represents the last Monday of the month.  The numeric value in a
      BYDAY rule part with the FREQ rule part set to YEARLY corresponds
      to an offset within the month when the BYMONTH rule part is
      present, and corresponds to an offset within the year when the
      BYWEEKNO or BYMONTH rule parts are present.  If an integer
      modifier is not present, it means all days of this type within the
      specified frequency.  For example, within a MONTHLY rule, MO
      represents all Mondays within the month.  The BYDAY rule part MUST
      NOT be specified with a numeric value when the FREQ rule part is
      not set to MONTHLY or YEARLY.  Furthermore, the BYDAY rule part
      MUST NOT be specified with a numeric value with the FREQ rule part
      set to YEARLY when the BYWEEKNO rule part is specified.
*/

 

I still need to check and see how importing iCalender feeds work in IPS4. Single the Google Calendar API supports RRULEs, I'm going to guess that their Calendars do too. I need to see how IPS4 handles importing a feed. Specifically I am interested in:

• Can members comment?
• Can members RSVP?
• Does the calendar stay in sync, or is it a manual process?

Basically, can I pull events from a feed without losing any features granted by IPS4.

Using a third party calendar is still far from ideal. So the goal of this post is two fold:

• Request IPS4 support more of the vCalendar/iCalendar specification (specifically regarding recurrence)
• Talk more about my (or other people's) experience with iCalendar Feed imports

Sometimes it can take a week or more for me to respond, but I will try to be more prompt in checking in.