ICS file doesn't respect London Time Zone

[erinosher]

Our ICS file generation in /scripts/generateICS.js just sets all events to UTC. When generating the file it should generate it using GMT and BST where applicable as all events are run in the UK Local Time.

[arvidboivie]

I'll take a look at this

[arvidboivie]

I can't really figure this one out, to me it seems like it already works. Would it be possible to describe a test case?

[erinosher]

Hi @arvidboivie here's an example

Below, is a snippet from the current generation of the ICS

BEGIN:VEVENT
UID:[email protected]
SUMMARY:Intro to Linux
DTSTAMP:20191010T223700Z
DTSTART:20191015T183000Z
DTEND:20191015T200000Z
URL:https://hacksocnotts.co.uk/event/2019-intro-to-linux
GEO:52.9533603;-1.1892748
LOCATION:A32 - Ada Lovelace Lab
STATUS:CONFIRMED
ORGANIZER;CN=HackSoc Nottingham:mailto:[email protected]
BEGIN:VALARM
ACTION:DISPLAY
TRIGGER:-PT2H
END:VALARM
BEGIN:VALARM
ACTION:DISPLAY
TRIGGER:-PT1H
END:VALARM
BEGIN:VALARM
ACTION:DISPLAY
TRIGGER:-PT15M
END:VALARM
END:VEVENT

You'll note that both DTSTART and DTEND are formatted with a Z at the end indicating that they're in UTC time.

However, the event above happens next week at 18:30 local time, which would be 17:30 Z because the UK is currently one hour ahead of GMT.

I believe the fix would be either to use the Europe/London timezone when generating the stamps or write a different way for the generation of the timestamps to be daylight savings time aware.

[DanielCordell]

@aaronosher @arvidboivie the ical file is now showing our events as running at midnight as far as I can see. Would this change have broken it?

[arvidboivie]

@DanielCordell If that behaviour is recent then it is likely that my change broke it. I would suggest the changes to be reverted in that case, I do not currently have time to troubleshoot this.

[erinosher]

@DanielCordell in my outlook, it seems to be fine, however, I think the behaviour may have come from removing time-zones all together.

Reverting #101 and updating it to calculate time zone is probably the best option.