Author

Sam Roberts <vieuxtech@gmail.com>

Copyright

Copyright © 2008 Sam Roberts

License

May be distributed under the same terms as Ruby

Homepage

vpim.rubyforge.org

Install

gem install vpim

vPim provides calendaring, scheduling, and contact support for Ruby through the standard iCalendar and vCard data formats for “personal information” exchange.

• ZipDX.com: for sponsoring development of FREQ=weekly and BYSETPOS in recurrence rules.

• RubyForge.org: for their generous hosting of this project.

There is a vPim package installable using ruby-gems:

# gem install vpim (may require root privilege)

vCard (RFC 2426) is a format for personal information, see Vpim::Vcard and Vpim::Maker::Vcard.

iCalendar (RFC 2445) is a format for calendar related information, see Vpim::Icalendar.

vCard and iCalendar support is built on top of an implementation of the MIME Content-Type for Directory Information (RFC 2425). The basic RFC 2425 format is implemented by Vpim::DirectoryInfo and Vpim::DirectoryInfo::Field.

The libary is quite useful, but improvements are ongoing. If you find something missing or have suggestions, please contact me. I can’t promise instantaneous turnaround, but I might be able to suggest another approach, and features requested by users of vPim go to the top of the todo list. If you need a feature for a commercial project, consider sponsoring development.

Here’s an example to give a sense for how iCalendars are encoded and decoded:

require 'vpim/icalendar'

cal = Vpim::Icalendar.create2

cal.add_event do |e|
  e.dtstart       Date.new(2005, 04, 28)
  e.dtend         Date.new(2005, 04, 29)
  e.summary       "Monthly meet-the-CEO day"
  e.description <<'---'
Unlike last one, this meeting will change your life because
we are going to discuss your likely demotion if your work isn't
done soon.
---
  e.categories    [ 'APPOINTMENT' ]
  e.categories do |c| c.push 'EDUCATION' end
  e.url           'http://www.example.com'
  e.sequence      0
  e.access_class  "PRIVATE"
  e.transparency  'OPAQUE'

  now = Time.now
  e.created       now
  e.lastmod       now

  e.organizer do |o|
    o.cn = "Example Organizer, Mr."
    o.uri = "mailto:organizer@example.com"
  end

  attendee = Vpim::Icalendar::Address.create("mailto:attendee@example.com")
  attendee.rsvp = true
  e.add_attendee attendee
end

icsfile = cal.encode

puts '--- Encode:'

puts icsfile

puts '--- Decode:'

cal = Vpim::Icalendar.decode(icsfile).first

cal.components do |e|
  puts e.summary
  puts e.description
  puts e.dtstart.to_s
  puts e.dtend.to_s
end

This produces:

--- Encode:
BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
PRODID:-//Ensemble Independent//vPim 0.357//EN
CALSCALE:Gregorian
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20050428
DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20050429
SUMMARY:Monthly meet-the-CEO day
DESCRIPTION:Unlike last one, this meeting will change your life because\nwe
  are going to discuss your likely demotion if your work isn't\ndone soon.\n
CATEGORIES:APPOINTMENT,EDUCATION
URL:http://www.example.com
SEQUENCE:0
CLASS:PRIVATE
CREATED:20060402T231755
LAST-MODIFIED:20060402T231755
ORGANIZER;CN="Example Organizer, Mr.":mailto:organizer@example.com
ATTENDEE;RSVP=true:mailto:attendee@example.com
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR
--- Decode:
Monthly meet-the-CEO day
Unlike last one, this meeting will change your life because
we are going to discuss your likely demotion if your work isn't
done soon.
Thu Apr 28 00:00:00 UTC 2005
Fri Apr 29 00:00:00 UTC 2005

More examples of using vPim are provided in samples/.

vCard examples are:

• ex_mkvcard.txt: example of creating a vCard

• ex_cpvcard.txt: example of copying and them modifying a vCard

• ex_mkv21vcard.txt: example of creating version 2.1 vCard

• mutt-aliases-to-vcf.txt: convert a mutt aliases file to vCards

• ex_get_vcard_photo.txt: pull photo data from a vCard

• ab-query.txt: query the OS X Address Book to find vCards

• vcf-to-mutt.txt: query vCards for matches, output in formats useful with Mutt (see README.mutt for details)

• tabbed-file-to-vcf.txt: convert a tab-delimited file to vCards, a (small but) complete application contributed by Dane G. Avilla, thanks!

• vcf-to-ics.txt: example of how to create calendars of birthdays from vCards

• vcf-dump.txt: utility for dumping contents of .vcf files

iCalendar examples are:

• ics-to-rss.txt: prints todos as RSS, or starts a WEBrick servlet that publishes todos as a RSS feed. Thanks to Dave Thomas for this idea, from pragprog.com/pragdave/Tech/Blog/ToDos.rdoc.

• cmd-itip.txt: prints emailed iCalendar invitations in human-readable form, and see README.mutt for instruction on mutt integration. I get a lot of meeting invitations from Lotus Notes/Domino users at work, and this is pretty useful in figuring out where and when I am supposed to be.

• reminder.txt: prints upcoming events and todos, by default from Apple’s iCal calendars

• rrule.txt: utility for printing recurrence rules

• ics-dump.txt: utility for dumping contents of .ics files

vPim can be downloaded from the Ruby Forge project page:

• rubyforge.org/projects/vpim

or installed as a gem:

• sudo gem install vpim

For notifications about new releases, or to ask questions about vPim, please subscribe to “vpim-talk”:

• rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/vpim-talk