Importing iCal to Zimbra

[dandus]

I am currently using a WebCalendar and I have now installed Zimbra. Is there anyway I can import the iCal I obtained from WebCalendar nd import it to Zimbra's calendar?

I have been starting to migrate my mails from hmailserver to Zimbra.

[KevinH]

We don't have support for ical import but it's something we have planned.

[tim brennan]

If you can serve the .ICS file on a web server somewhere, you might be able to use the "synchronize with remote calendar" feature to import them.

In the Calendar app, go to create a new calendar (right click the grey part that says "Calendars"), and click on "synchronize with remote calendar" when you get the create dialog. Point it at the URL of the .ICS file you want to import.

Unfortunately, you can only set the synchronize URL when you create the calendar -- and you can't delete the default calendar -- so you're stuck importing them into a "Second" calendar.

[dandus]

Thanks Tim.

I have now the following iCal file (a very simple one) accessiable from http://www.osix.net/modules/folder/i...9986&action=vf

BEGIN:VCALENDAR
PRODID:-//WebCalendar-0.9.40
VERSION:2.0
METHOD:PUBLISH
BEGIN:VEVENT
UID:20051208T050234Z-8480995-1324@calendar.abcd.net
SUMMARY:Frankie's birthday
DESCRIPTION:Frankie's birthday
CLASS:PUBLIC
ATTENDEE;ROLE=OWNER;STATUS=CONFIRMED:dandus@abcd.net
DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20040113
DTSTAMP:20051208T050234Z
DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20040114
RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;INTERVAL=1
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR

Yet when I followed your instructions, I encountered parse error as follows:

msg - parse error: unrecognized remote content
com.zimbra.cs.service.ServiceException: parse error: unrecognized remote content
	at com.zimbra.cs.service.ServiceException.PARSE_ERROR(ServiceException.java:117)
	at com.zimbra.cs.service.FeedManager.retrieveRemoteDatasource(FeedManager.java:141)
	at com.zimbra.cs.mailbox.Mailbox.importFeed(Mailbox.java:3543)
	at com.zimbra.cs.mailbox.Mailbox.synchronizeFolder(Mailbox.java:3534)
	at com.zimbra.cs.service.mail.CreateFolder.handle(CreateFolder.java:75)
	at com.zimbra.soap.SoapEngine.dispatchRequest(SoapEngine.java:249)
	at com.zimbra.soap.SoapEngine.dispatch(SoapEngine.java:163)
	at com.zimbra.soap.SoapEngine.dispatch(SoapEngine.java:84)
	at com.zimbra.soap.SoapServlet.doPost(SoapServlet.java:226)
	at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:709)
	at com.zimbra.cs.servlet.ZimbraServlet.service(ZimbraServlet.java:148)
	at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:802)
	at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.internalDoFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:252)
	at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.doFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:173)
	at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardWrapperValve.invoke(StandardWrapperValve.java:214)
	at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContextValve.invoke(StandardContextValve.java:178)
	at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHostValve.invoke(StandardHostValve.java:126)
	at org.apache.catalina.valves.ErrorReportValve.invoke(ErrorReportValve.java:105)
	at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardEngineValve.invoke(StandardEngineValve.java:107)
	at org.apache.catalina.valves.AccessLogValve.invoke(AccessLogValve.java:526)
	at org.apache.catalina.connector.CoyoteAdapter.service(CoyoteAdapter.java:148)
	at org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11Processor.process(Http11Processor.java:825)
	at org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11Protocol$Http11ConnectionHandler.processConnection(Http11Protocol.java:738)
	at org.apache.tomcat.util.net.PoolTcpEndpoint.processSocket(PoolTcpEndpoint.java:526)
	at org.apache.tomcat.util.net.LeaderFollowerWorkerThread.runIt(LeaderFollowerWorkerThread.java:80)
	at org.apache.tomcat.util.threads.ThreadPool$ControlRunnable.run(ThreadPool.java:684)
	at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:595)

code - service.PARSE_ERROR
method - ZmCsfeCommand.prototype.invoke
detail - soap:Sender

This iCal file is imported OK to at least Microsoft Outlook. Is there anything in my iCal file that Zimbra does not support? I may just as well modify it and import again.

[tim brennan]

So, your server is returning some weird stuff at the beginning of the file. You can see it for yourself:

Type into a shell:

%telnet http://www.osix.net 80
GET /modules/folder/index.php?tid=9986&action=vf HTTP/1.1
Host: www.osix.net

Server responds with:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Thu, 08 Dec 2005 19:43:22 GMT
Server:
Expires: Thu, 08 Dec 2005 19:43:23 GMT
Last-Modified: Thu, 08 Dec 2005 19:43:23 GMT
Cache-Control: no-cache
Pragma: no-cache
Content-Disposition: inline; filename="dandus.ics"
Transfer-Encoding: chunked
Content-Type: application/octet-stream

19d
BEGIN:VCALENDAR
PRODID:-//WebCalendar-0.9.40
VERSION:2.0
METHOD:PUBLISH
...

The 19d makes sense: that is the chunk-size (413 bytes) for the transfer-encoding. The garbage at the beginning of the line before BEGIN:VCALENDAR doesn't make sense.

In our case it causes the feed parser to break, since it doesn't know what to do with that garbage text at the beginning of the returned data -- it doesn't even get to the iCalendar part (which looks OK)

[dandus]

Tim,

Please bear with me. I have tried placing the iCal on some other servers, yet the first three wierd characters are still there. I have changed the file suffix for a few times and have even changed the suffix to .php. Yet the three wierd characters are always there.

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Fri, 09 Dec 2005 15:31:19 GMT
Server: Apache/2.0.55 (Win32) PHP/4.4.2RC2-dev
Last-Modified: Fri, 09 Dec 2005 14:52:30 GMT
ETag: "2ae96-1a1-88da7534"
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Content-Length: 417
Content-Type: text/calendar

BEGIN:VCALENDAR
PRODID:-//WebCalendar-0.9.40
VERSION:2.0
METHOD:PUBLISH
BEGIN:VEVENT
UID:20051209T131421Z-8768506-1324@calendar.abcd.net
SUMMARY:Frankie's birthday
DESCRIPTION:Frankie's birthday
CLASS:PUBLIC
ATTENDEE;ROLE=OWNER;STATUS=CONFIRMED:dandus@abcd.net
DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20040113
DTSTAMP:20051209T131421Z
DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20040114
RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;INTERVAL=1
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR

I looked at "" and they are hax values "EF BB BF". It seems to be the UTF-8 representation of the BOM (Byte Order Mark). Any hints on it?

[tim brennan]

Ahhh -- nice catch. I **think** you are right about it being the BOM, and it looks like our FeedManager (the code that handles the import of RSS and iCalendar) doesn't deal with this correctly.

Unfortunately, the dev who I really want to ask about this is out of town until early next week -- so I can't confirm this -- but it seems to fit.

Either way, even if it is a bug on our side, that doesn't really help you right now. My suggestion at this point would be to find an editor that can generate the file as ascii text, not UTF-8. The problem is in the iCal file itself, not in the webserver's presentation: so changing it to .php or a different server probably won't help you.

[dkarp]

This issue (bug 4985) should now be fixed in the source tree.