I want to create a file, that will be accessed by using the webcal:// protocol.
The final goal is to let the user subscribe to a shared calendar, and I know that this can be done in a million different ways, and that webcal has disadvantages, but please treat this question as a technical question about webcal and don't offer alternatives.
What should be its content, if I want it to allow a user to subscribe to a shared calendar?
How should I host such a file? Most of the servers I know support only http/s queries.
Thx!
Please refer to the RFC5545 shared calendar (ics)n specification https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc5545 for the format of contents of the ics calendar files.
Note that webcal is an unofficial apple protocol for ics calendar files. Google and other calendar providers use https for their shared calendars. These can be hosted on most servers. An ics url is literally just a file (or active url). If you persist in using webcal protocol only, some calendar applications may not accept so I strongly suggest the official 'alternative'.
From page 5 of the specification
"The iCalendar format is suitable as an exchange format between
applications or systems. The format is defined in terms of a MIME
content type. This will enable the object to be exchanged using
several transports, including but not limited to SMTP, HTTP,....."
Related
I have implemented a (sports field) booking system. I would like to add one feature: when a customer makes a booking I would like to offer him the possibility to get/sync his newly created entry in his own calendar.
One solution what I already found is to create an iCalendar feed for the customer with his bookings. So he can take this feed (basically an URL pointing to a user-specific .ics file) and integrate it into his calendar applications (as most will support the addition of external calendars).
One bottleneck with this solution is that a good amount of customers use Gmail and its calendar. And it may take some time until Gmail refreshes external calendars. So it may take up to few hours until the newly created entry appears in the customers calendar.
Of course there's no such problem when customer is using calendar apps which offer more frequent or on-demand synchronization.
So my question here: what other solutions can you recommend? An export in a file for the newly created event? Or any other technology to sync our bookings with the most widely used calendars? What would be the most usable solution for customers?
If you want to be able to auto update / synchronise the booking by having the user subscribe, then the ics feed is the standard cross application way to do it.
If it is just one booking and is never going to be updated, then you could encourage them to import the ics file to their calendar which usually then appears within seconds.
You can also email them the ics file. It is then not subscribeable as it is NOT a url. How it is handled depends on their email and system setup, but most would offer import into their calendar. (Mine opens in notepad++) ;)
Not a Lotus Notes Developer but have to get data in a Lotus Notes database into SharePoint. All of the LN entries have attachments. I tried to export to a csv file but that doesn't include the attachments. I think created a new view with the Attachments field but that only returns the number of attachments. How can I extract the associated attachments with each LN form. Thanks in advance
Your question is pretty broad. Attachments are (sometimes) treated as embedded objects in a Rich Text Field. This URL has some sample code:
https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/en/SSVRGU_9.0.1/basic/H_EXAMPLES_EMBEDDEDOBJECTS_PROPERTY_RTITEM.html
Copy/paste may not work for you because the attachments may not be in a field called "Body" or there may be multiple "Body" fields on the document (which requires other considerations beyond the scope of this question), or the attachment may be embedded objects in the document. Or all the of the above. That that code will give you a sense of what you need to do.
Also, see this:
How to retrieve Lotus Notes attachments?
I have done this by writing LotusScript code to detach all the attachments from all docs into a single folder, using the document's UNID plus the attachment name for the filename in the folder. Adding the UNID covers cases where attachments with the same name exist in mulitple documents and might actually have different content. I do not attempt to de-duplicate.
The agent adds a NotesItem to each document giving the filename(s) of the detached attachment(s).
I then create a view containing all the fields that I want to export, including the new field with the filenames. I export that view to CSV. I hand the CSV and a zip file containing the attachments over to the SharePoint team.
Maybe a bit late but... I do have extensive experience (approx. 15 years) with data extraction from IBM Notes applications/databases - independent of the type of application - and have supported migrations of quite a few large IBM Notes applications to various targets for companies around the world.
You can access IBM Notes databases using the native C-API, LotusScript, COM or Java, for example or make a document available for further processing by exporting it to Domino XML (DXL) format.
The C-API is the foundation of IBM Notes, meaning that COM and Java APIs only offer a subset of the C-API's functionality. Any of the APIs should give you the ability to extract a document's metadata and attachments. However:
A document, including it's attachment, can be encrypted using an IBM Notes ID. If you do not have access to the ID that was used to encrypt the document, you will neither be able to extract the document nor the attachment.
Attachments can be "real attachments" or so called "embedded objects". Depending on the type of attachment, the attachment needs to be handled differently if it comes to the API calls required to do the export.
Attachments can be compressed. In most cases, the API should handle the decompression transparently. However, there is at least one proprietary compression algorithm (based on Hufman) that is widely used. If you extract documents in DXL format, you will not be able to read those attachments, as they are embedded into the DXL in compressed form.
Objects being embedded into a document using (Object Linking and Embeddeding (OLE)) cannot be extracted using the COM or Java API. I.e. even if you gain access to the documents, you will not be able to transform them into a readable format.
If the information you are trying to transfer from IBM Notes to SharePoint is important to the company you work for, I would recommend to rely on a proven solution for the export/migration rather than developing this on your own, as the details can really be tricky.
Should you have any further questions, don't hesitate to get in touch.
I would like to know if this scenario would be possible in any programming language combined with any database technology.
I would like to automatically save received pdf files that are attached in emails into a database. Is this possible? Is there any library or framework available to do so?
Yes, I would recommend using Google Apps Script for this. The approach you should follow is to use the GmailApp class (Documentation here) to get the messages you need, you can use methods like getInboxThreads() (Documentation), to retrieve the messages.
After you've found the message and retrieved the attachment (which you can do withgetAttachments() (Documentation)), you can use the JDBC Service to connect with external databases. The specifics here depend a lot on what database you want to connect with, but the documentation will lead you in the right direction.
I have a question regarding calDAV servers and .ics calendar files.
Is it possible, to make certain VEVENTS read-only and others writable?
The user should not be allowed to change every VEVENT in his calendar only some selected by
me.
Thanks!
A call to all Win32 developers... I'm developing an application in C using plain Win32. I wanted to ask about Windows development standards regarding these things:
Is there a standard Windows error log api? For example if my client uses my app and it crashes, I would like them to send me the error log and I would prefer this being a standard location so they can maybe access it with a standard Windows log utility.
My app needs to store settings information. I think the registry is the standard utility for this task. Is that right?
My app needs to store and retrieve files that it downloaded from the internet - images, executables etc. Is Application Data/myapp the standard location to store this type of information?
My app needs a very straight-forward database - I'm using CSV for this. I basically need to store and retrieve this type of data so I'm just serializing a .csv file from Application Data/myapp. Is there a better Windows standard way of doing this?
That's all for now :). Thanks!
Is there a standard Windows error log api?
There is the Windows Event Log, but I don't think you want a typical user having to go into it to extract your logged information.
You probably don't want to log by default, unless you're shipping questionable pre-release code. When a user is experiencing problems, then you have them turn logging on. In this case, I recommend placing the file somewhere that typical users have experience with, like My Documents.
By the way, if you're writing a standalone application and want the best possible information in the event of a crash, look into minidumps. Here is a Codeproject sample.
My app needs to store settings information
Yep, registry.
My app needs to store and retrieve files
Yes, App Data. Just be sure to use SHGetFolderPath and CSIDL_APPDATA.
My app needs a very straight-forward database
There's nothing wrong with CSV for simple data. You could store the data in XML and use MSXML to process it, if you prefer. I've used SQlite in the past when I needed fast, lightweight storage of more complicated data.