Extension:Semantic Result Formats/icalendar format

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The result format icalendar, part of the Semantic Result Formats extension, is used to produce links for downloading data from a wiki in iCalendar format. It is a special format for data export and therefore properties must use known labels to specify how the wiki data relates to the iCalendar format.

Contents

[edit] Example

{{#ask: [[Category:Person]]
 | ?startdate = start
 | ?enddate = end
 | ?location
 | format=icalendar
}}

This would display a link to download the iCalendar file. Examples can be found on any event page on semanticweb.org, e.g. http://semanticweb.org/wiki/ISWC2008.

[edit] Parameters

The iCalendar format introduces the following additional parameters:

  • icalendartitle: the text to be used as the title of the calendar file
  • icalendardescription: the text to be used as the description of the calendar file

Both of these are optional. If the query used to generate the iCalendar export is just a single "concept", then the concept page title and concept description (if any) are taken as the default for the above, if no other values are given. This way, one can create shorter URLs that do not have to contain a long description text.

[edit] Data fields

Properties in printout statements should use one of the following labels, or otherwise are ignored in the resulting iCalendar. The available fields are:

  • start: the start date, must be of type Date,
  • end: the end date, must be of type Date,
  • location: the place of the event (type arbitrary, but Page would be common),
  • description: description of a single event (not suported by all tools, but useful to have more than the short page name as an event name.

[edit] Remarks

Calendars work very well on most calendar tools, with the notable exception of MS Outlook up to version 2003. Only later versions of this tool can deal with calendars that have more than one event.

Calendar downloads can be used in two ways by a calendar software. Either the calendar is downloaded and imported into a local calendar, or it is subscribed to and updated regularly. In the former case, changes in the wiki will not affect the imported dates, while in the latter case changes in the wiki will be propagated to the subscriber of the calendar.