Reading a webcal URL in ruby on rails

Question

I am trying to parse a webcal link

webcal://www.facebook.com/ical/b.php?uid=13301632&key=asdgagaweg

in a Ruby on Rails app so I can customize the event entries. I have looked into both RiCal and icalendar but neither show any support for reading a calendar feed (webcal://).

Are there any Rails libraries that support parsing webcal addresses? If not, how should I go about creating my own parser?

Answer 1

webcal is just an unofficial URI scheme for accessing icalendar documents. You can get the calendar using http and parse it using one of several icalendar plugins:

require 'net/http'
uri = URI('http://www.facebook.com/ical/b.php?uid=13301632&key=asdgagaweg')
calendar = Net::HTTP.get(uri)

For alternative ways to perform the http get request: How make a HTTP request using Ruby on Rails?

Then parse the response using your favourite plug-in:

icalendar:

cal = icalendar.parse(calendar).first

vPim:

cal = Vpim::Icalendar.decode(calendar).first  

ri_cal:

cal = RiCal.parse_string(calendar).first