The high-level framework¶
Overview¶
The high level ical feed-generating is supplied by the ICalFeed
class. To create a feed, write a
ICalFeed
class and point to an instance
of it in your URLconf.
With RSS feeds, the items in the feed represent articles or simple web pages.
The ICalFeed
class represents an
iCalendar calendar. Calendars contain items which are events.
Let’s look at a simple example. Here the item_start_datetime is a django-ical extension that supplies the start time of the event.
from django_ical.views import ICalFeed
from examplecom.models import Event
class EventFeed(ICalFeed):
"""
A simple event calender
"""
product_id = '-//example.com//Example//EN'
timezone = 'UTC'
file_name = "event.ics"
def items(self):
return Event.objects.all().order_by('-start_datetime')
def item_title(self, item):
return item.title
def item_description(self, item):
return item.description
def item_start_datetime(self, item):
return item.start_datetime
To connect a URL to this calendar, put an instance of the EventFeed object in your URLconf. For example:
from django.conf.urls import patterns, url, include
from myproject.feeds import EventFeed
urlpatterns = patterns('',
# ...
(r'^latest/feed.ics$', EventFeed()),
# ...
)
File Downloads¶
The file_name parameter is an optional used as base name when generating the file. By default django-ical will not set the Content-Disposition header of the response. By setting the file_name parameter you can cause django_ical to set the Content-Disposition header and set the file name. In the example below, it will be called “event.ics”.
class EventFeed(ICalFeed):
"""
A simple event calender
"""
product_id = '-//example.com//Example//EN'
timezone = 'UTC'
file_name = "event.ics"
# ...
The file_name parameter can be a method like other properties. Here we can set the file name to include the id of the object returned by get_object().
class EventFeed(ICalFeed):
"""
A simple event calender
"""
product_id = '-//example.com//Example//EN'
timezone = 'UTC'
def file_name(self, obj):
return "feed_%s.ics" % obj.id
# ...
Property Reference and Extensions¶
django-ical adds a number of extensions to the base syndication framework in order to support iCalendar feeds and ignores many fields used in RSS feeds. Here is a table of all of the fields that django-ical supports.
Property name | iCalendar field name | Description |
---|---|---|
product_id | PRODID | The calendar product ID |
timezone | X-WR-TIMEZONE | The calendar timezone |
title | X-WR-CALNAME | The calendar name/title |
description | X-WR-CALDESC | The calendar name/title |
method | METHOD | The calendar method such as meeting requests. |
item_guid | UID | The event’s unique id. This id should be globally unique so you should add an @<domain_name> to your id. |
item_title | SUMMARY | The event name/title |
item_description | DESCRIPTION | The event description |
item_link | URL | The event url |
item_class | CLASS | The event class (e.g. PUBLIC, PRIVATE, CONFIDENTIAL) |
item_created | CREATED | The event create time |
item_updateddate | LAST-MODIFIED | The event modified time |
item_start_datetime | DTSTART | The event start time |
item_end_datetime | DTEND | The event end time |
item_location | LOCATION | The event location |
item_geolocation | GEO | The latitude and longitude of the event. The value returned by this property should be a two-tuple containing the latitude and longitude as float values. semicolon. Ex: (37.386013, -122.082932) |
item_transparency | TRANSP | The event transparency. Defines whether the event shows up in busy searches. (e.g. OPAQUE, TRANSPARENT) |
item_organizer | ORGANIZER | The event organizer. Expected to be a vCalAddress object. See iCalendar documentation or tests to know how to build them. |
Note:
- django-ical does not use the
link
property required by the Django syndication framework.
The low-level framework¶
Behind the scenes, the high-level iCalendar framework uses a lower-level
framework for generating feeds’ ical data. This framework lives in a single
module: django_ical.feedgenerator
.
You use this framework on your own, for lower-level feed generation. You can also create custom feed generator subclasses for use with the feed_type option.
See: The syndication feed framework: Specifying the type of feed