jCal - RFC 7265

This chapter describes how to read and write jCal files, and how to convert them between iCalendar files.

RFC 7265 specifies how to convert the iCalendar format to and from the jCal format, a JSON based representation.

Read jCal input

The following jCal calendar contains one event.

>>> jCal = """
... ["vcalendar",
...   [
...     ["calscale", {}, "text", "GREGORIAN"],
...     ["prodid", {}, "text", "-//Example Inc.//Example Calendar//EN"],
...     ["version", {}, "text", "2.0"]
...   ],
...   [
...     ["vevent",
...       [
...         ["dtstamp", {}, "date-time", "2008-02-05T19:12:24Z"],
...         ["dtstart", {}, "date", "2008-10-06"],
...         ["summary", {}, "text", "Planning meeting"],
...         ["uid", {}, "text", "4088E990AD89CB3DBB484909"]
...       ],
...       []
...     ]
...   ]
... ]
... """

Use Component.from_jcal() to parse the list or JSON str.

>>> from icalendar import Calendar
>>> calendar = Calendar.from_jcal(jCal)

After parsing the calendar, inspect it as shown.

>>> print(calendar.prodid)
-//Example Inc.//Example Calendar//EN
>>> print(calendar.events[0].summary)
Planning meeting

Write jCal output

To convert a Calendar and any other Component to jCal, use the to_jcal() method.

>>> from pprint import pprint
>>> pprint(calendar.to_jcal())
['vcalendar',
 [['calscale', {}, 'text', 'GREGORIAN'],
  ['prodid', {}, 'text', '-//Example Inc.//Example Calendar//EN'],
  ['version', {}, 'text', '2.0']],
 [['vevent',
   [['dtstamp', {}, 'date-time', '2008-02-05T19:12:24Z'],
    ['dtstart', {}, 'date', '2008-10-06'],
    ['summary', {}, 'text', 'Planning meeting'],
    ['uid', {}, 'text', '4088E990AD89CB3DBB484909']],
   []]]]

To directly generate JSON output and write it to a file or send it to a server, use to_json(). The following commands writes the jCal version of the calendar to a temporary file.

>>> from tempfile import NamedTemporaryFile
>>> file = NamedTemporaryFile(suffix=".jcal")
>>> file.write(calendar.to_json().encode("UTF-8"))
358