Pical2org

A python script to convert an iCalendar file (.ics) to a text file formatted for org-mode.

Note: This script will create a single entry for each repeated event from the iCalendar file. While this is not elegant, this trade off is useful as it allows for greater ability to specify repeated appointments by allowing for the removal of individual events.

Rationale

This project was created to help put my Google and Outlook calendar data into org-mode so there would be a centralized location for me to find my daily tasks and appointments. This script will take any iCalendar file and create a file readable by org-mode.

Why create this project when there are so many other options out there?

1. I had issues getting the org-gcal package (https://github.com/kidd/org-gcal.el/issues) to work properly with repeating events (kidd/org-gcal.el#165). I also tend to keep my Google or Outlook calendar separate from org-mode as I focus on using org-mode for tasks and projects and I prefer the GUI for creating events as there is more fine detail to the rules for recurring events than org-mode supports with its basic repeaters.
2. The awk script ical2org (https://github.com/msherry/ical2org/blob/master/ical2org.awk) is fantastic, but it does not process EXDATE rules which is something that the python library recurring-icalendar-events does support.

Requirements

Python 3 is required to execute the code. Pical2org is not backwards compatible with Python 2.

In order to process the icalendar files, the following Python libraries will need to be installed using a tool such as pip install:

• icalendar
• python-dateutil
• pytz
• recurring_ical_events
• six

Usage

Below is documentation on how to use Pical2org.

Command Line Arguments

The command line arguments for Pical2org are shown below in the help documentation produced from the command python3 pical2org.py -h:

usage: pical2org.py [-h] [-o OUTPUT_FILE] [-w [WINDOW]] [-f] INPUT_FILE

Converts an ical (.ics) file into a text file formatted for use in Emacs org-mde.

positional arguments:
  INPUT_FILE            A ical (.ics) file to be read. This can either be a path to a local or it may be a url to a remote file.

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -o OUTPUT_FILE, --output OUTPUT_FILE
                        Name of file to store the output results.
  -w [WINDOW], --window [WINDOW]
                        Length of time before and after today in which events will be collected
  -f, --force_clobber   Force clobbering of and output file i the file already exists. If this option is provided, the output file will overwrite the existing file
                        with the same name.

Cron Job

If you want to have your online cloud-based calendar regularly, you can run the following template Bash script as a cron job:

#!/bin/bash

PICAL2ORG=/path/to/pical2org.py
ORGFILE=/path/to/orgfile.org
URL="url or path to .ics file"

python3 $PICAL2ORG -f -w 1000 -o $ORGFILE $URL

In the above, example, a window of 1000 days is used to collect events 1000 days into the future and into the past. To download all the events, remove this argument or you may reduce this number to decrease the size of the output org file. The -f argument will overwrite the existing org file with the updated version.

Future

Here is a list of planned upcoming changes to this project:

• [X] Process .ics files from a url using the request Python library and process them so they do not have to be downloaded and saved onto the host system and removed later
• [ ] Add options to modify the header of the org file
• [ ] Create an option to insert or append the results into an existing org-mode file