Create iCal/ics-events by converting a csv-file or table

What it does

This script converts a csv-file (or R-dataframe) to an .ics-file that can important into calendars, e.g. the default iOS calendar app or Google calendar.

How it works

• run create_events.R

  • Import an csv-file
  • Build an .ics-events by iterating over the rows
  • Export an .ics-file

Default ics-event

The ics-templates follows the example on Wikipedia and uses the following parameters for a single event:

BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
PRODID:http://www.example.com/calendarapplication/
CALSCALE:GREGORIAN
METHOD:PUBLISH
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART:20060912T060000
DTEND:20060912T070000
UID:461092315540@example.com
LOCATION:Somewhere
SUMMARY:title of event
DESCRIPTION: description of event
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR

Every entry needs an unique ID UID.

Multiple events can be created by repeating the section between BEGIN:VEVENT and END:VEVENT . For example adding two events with one .ics-file (and - important - different UID's):

BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
PRODID:http://www.example.com/calendarapplication/
CALSCALE:GREGORIAN
METHOD:PUBLISH
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART:20060912T060000
DTEND:20060912T070000
UID:461092315540@example.com
LOCATION:Somewhere
SUMMARY:title of event
DESCRIPTION: description of event
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART:20060912T060000
DTEND:20060912T070000
UID:461092315541@example.com
LOCATION:Somewhere
SUMMARY:title of 2nd event
DESCRIPTION: description of 2nd event
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR

More documentation and specifications can be found here.

Example

The example uses data from a lecture series.

The csv-file needs to look like this:

starttime	endtime	summary	description	location
20171017T191500	20171017T204500	Podiumsdiskussion: Wem gehören meine Daten?	Hörsaal B 101 https://www.uni-muenchen.de/studium/studienangebot/lehrangebote/ringvorlesung/rv_17_18/index.html	Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1, 81669 München