exclude time periods in iCalendar

Question

i have a very simple vevent "every Monday 9 to 5" and some time periods where this event doesn't take place. like 7.8.2011 to 24.10.2011. What is the best way to represent this in iCalendar?

a lot of EXDATEs? special EXRULEs?

Answer 1

Oh dear,

Exrule is deprecated now in RFC 5545, so best skip that one (although that would be neatest and most ics s/w probably still copes with it (like mine :), for compatibility )

EXDATES are valid, but gosh that would be cumbersome if you mean the whole period from 7 August to 24 October, you'd have to enter every week day

You possibly have to just create two events - although one could 'relate' them.

I have not tried it yet, have been thinking about if for a different reason, but there is the concept of 'RELATED-TO' with modifer RELTYPE (PARENT, SIBLING etc)

RELATED-TO;RELTYPE=SIBLING:19960401-080045-4000F192713@ example.com

Property Name: RELATED-TO

Purpose: This property is used to represent a relationship or reference between one calendar component and another.

Value Type: TEXT

Property Parameters: IANA, non-standard, and relationship type property parameters can be specified on this property.

Conformance: This property can be specified in the "VEVENT", "VTODO", and "VJOURNAL" calendar components.

Description: The property value consists of the persistent, globally unique identifier of another calendar component. This value would be represented in a calendar component by the "UID" property.