Simple Ical Service NG for Egroupware

0.9.3X

Note:
this is still EXPERIMENTAL, USE AT YOUR OWN RISK! and better not yet in a production environment.
Version:
0.9.37-ng-a1
Author:
jvl
Date:
20060427
Note:
you need to have package EgwIcal in version >= 0.9.30-ng to be able to use this icalsrv-ng version!

About IcalSrv NG

IcalSrv NG is a rewrite of the old IcalSrv service that allows an ical client (see Clients for IcalSrv) like Mozilla Sunbird, Apple iCal or Korganizer to access the events and tasks from a persons egroupware calendar and infolog application, remotely via a "icalendar over http" connection. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICalendar for more info on this format.

This means that in the client you can download (aka reload ) the data from an a socalled subscribed virtual calendar on the egroupware server and then read and manipulate it offline. On a later moment you can upload (aka publish ) this client calendardata again to egroupware. The changes made in your client should then propagate to your calendars and infolog maintained on the egw server. All this, provided you have the appropiate access rights for the egroupware server data.

Given this functionality you can use an ical client in combination with Egroupware in two typical use cases:

At the moment, the IcalSrv service is still a simple --experimental-- variant that is not based on webdav (as most of these services), but that can prove evertheless to be quite practical.

Virtual Calendars

In the current NG (new generation) version it is based on the idea that you access a Virtual Calendar that defines a set of events and tasks found in your Egroupware server. To see what virtual calendars are provided by IcalSrv in your Egroupware server you can acces the Egroupware server via a special url. This gives you, possibly after some form of authentication, an overview of the available virtual calendars. These virtual calendars come in two variants:

Some important issues and warnings

For the latest state of bugs and problems please have a look at the info in IcalSrv Release Log

At the moment IcaSrv allows only upload and download of complete (virtual) calendars (with events and todos) and no direct deletions of events. (Read more on this in the FAQ at UB: Help, I cannot delete events or todos via IcalSrv )

We are working on extensions towards real groupdav and caldav behaviour.

Note:
We tried to prevent that accidental misuse of the service can ruin all your egroupware data. But, be warned: when you use the service for publishing from the client, you can (and want to) change data in the egroupware server, and thus you have a potential risk of damaging or losing egroupware data!
One well known danger is the loss of multiple egroupware categories attributed to an event or task when you publish calendars from a client that doesnot allow multiple categories. In this case the single, client attributed, category will replace the original egw attributed set. Mozilla Sunbird is notably such a 'single category only" client.

For behaviour of the various clients see futher in IcalSrv clients status and supported features

Note:
At the moment (v 0.9.3X) the development of the virtual calendars (see Virtual Calendars ) has just started, so be sure to check to current state of these in the releaselog.

The latest versions (>v0.9.30) have been developed with php5 and apache2. Al though we try to keep it all compatible with php4, it may be the case that some problems come up if you use icalsrv with php4. Please report via mailinglist or bug list if you found some. See below for bug reporting.

SHORT experimental Install How-To:

Clients for IcalSrv

In IcalSrv clients status and supported features you can find some details on how to use the various ical clients together with IcalSrv. Screenshots, User experiences, a bit on supported features and hints on how to use a client for online and offline usage may be found there.

A short list of known ical clients (some tested some not) is:

The testing was with egw1.2rc9. ;-)

For an overview of more icalendar clients see e.g. http://microformats.org/wiki/icalendar-implementations

Documentation

There is (somewhere) complete doxygen generated documentation for the IcalSrv package. Otherwise you can generate it yourself by using doxygen on the source filetree. Maybe you are just reading it now ...

Make sure that you also read the FAQ in IcalSrv FAQ - some questions and answers , the Release Notes in IcalSrv Release Log and the Clients Overview in IcalSrv clients status and supported features

Testing and Debugging

As IcalSrv is still a young and experimental new service for Egroupware, that must mediate between a multitude of clients, each with their own peculiarities and the various internal applications of Egw, it is very likely that a lot of problems, deficiencies and bugs will appear.

Thus to get error feedback for it is a healthy thing. You should best do this --as with any egw application-- by following the guidelines See the egroupware wiki at http://www.egroupware.org/bug-reports for more instructions on this)

This will point you to the sourceforge.net Egroupware buglist at https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=78745&atid=554338 and the dedicated egroupware forums or mailinglist at http://www.egroupware.org/forum/?page_name=forum

What to report? Well you should realize that IcalSrv is --currently-- on it self just a rather simple http interface script, that relies for its connection to the egw backends heavily on the new (re) written EgwIcal package. This means that problems with in and export of iCalendar data will mostly have their source in that (i.e. EgwIcal) package! So in case of errors allways report info on that package and when debugging try the debug tools for that package.

The IcalSrv future

At some time we hope to provide the ability to let users configure their own calendars by setting search periods, access grants and possibly other criteria.

Later on we want to work towards GroupDav and CalDAV extended functionality.

...

have fun

JVL


Generated on Thu Jun 8 22:17:12 2006 for IcalSrv by  doxygen 1.4.6