How-To Guides#

Editing Calendar Data#

Calendar objects (events, todos, journals) can be accessed and modified using the icalendar or vobject libraries.

Reading Data#

For read-only access, use methods that return copies:

# Get raw iCalendar string
data = event.get_data()

# Get icalendar object (a copy - safe to inspect)
ical = event.get_icalendar_instance()
for comp in ical.subcomponents:
    print(comp.get("SUMMARY"))

# Get vobject object (a copy)
vobj = event.get_vobject_instance()

Modifying Data#

To edit an object, use context managers that “borrow” the object:

# Edit using icalendar
with event.edit_icalendar_instance() as cal:
    for comp in cal.subcomponents:
        if comp.name == "VEVENT":
            comp["SUMMARY"] = "New summary"
event.save()

# Edit using vobject
with event.edit_vobject_instance() as vobj:
    vobj.vevent.summary.value = "New summary"
event.save()

While inside the with block, the object is exclusively borrowed. Attempting to borrow a different representation will raise RuntimeError.

Quick Access#

For simple read access, use the component property:

# Read properties
summary = event.component["SUMMARY"]
start = event.component.start

Todo

  • Make a how-to on how to create a local backup and syncing it. (procrastinated until the get_calendar function is completed)

  • Make how-tos on each known calendar server and/or service provider - including known incompatibilities. Some information in the about.rst, should be moved here

  • Particularly Google.

See also python-caldav/caldav#513