[Line 10] Invalid datetime

[Susan Giles]

I’m getting the error:
[Line 10] Invalid datetime “20170904”. Date expected in YYYYMMDDTHHiissZ or YYYYMMDDTHHiiss format.
trying to pull the feed from:
http://www.srwmd.state.fl.us/common/modules/iCalendar/iCalendar.aspx?catID=14&feed=calendar

I was using another plugin and the same feed worked fine…any ideas what may be causing this?

Thanks!

[Stephen Harris]

Hi Susan,

This error is because the iCal fee is invalid. (See, for example this feed validator). The issue is that at datetime value is expected but only a date part is provided. You’ll probably find that that line is:

 DTSTART:20170904

whereas it should be

DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20170904

Other plug-ins may take a more liberal approach to the specifications, but in order to ensure expected behaviour, Event Organiser is fairly strict on the specifications. This is intended behaviour and a bug with the software used to produce that feed.

However, it’s not always possible to get a feed fixed (particularly when you have no control over it), so there is a small additional plug-in that can work-around this issue (it was created after another user reported an identical problem). That said, I’d encourage you to report this problem with the site in question as it is an invalid feed.

I’ll post a link later today to the above work-around plug-in.

[Susan Giles]

Hi Stephen! I’m still looking forward to the work-around you mentioned above…

[Stephen Harris]

Hi Susan,

My apologies, here’s the link: https://gist.github.com/stephenharris/f6c8ab43a8f1f06fd718.

There is a download link (zip file) on the right hand side. Simply unzip the file and place it in your plug-ins directory and activate as any other plug-in.

It requires Event Organiser 2.10 or better to function.

[Susan Giles]

Hi Stephen! Thanks for responding!

I followed your instructions and the feed did load 43 events and got an
“Unknown error” in a red box after the fetch. It looks like every time
I re-fetch, it duplicates the events.

Is there any way to figure out what this error is?

Thanks!

[Stephen Harris]

Hi Susan,

This is usually an error from another plug-in corrupting the ajax response, and so you may find that the events import correctly. (You can check your brower’s console, the network tab for errors in the ajax response).

However, the fact that the events are being duplicated is an entirely different matter. And there’s two issues at play here.

Firstly the source feed is generating new unique identifiers (UIDs) for the events on each request. These UIDs are suppose to be constant so that applications (like Event Organiser iCal Sync) can determine which events from a feed it has imported, and which it hasn’t.

Since the source feed is giving events a different UID each time the feed is requested, iCal Sync (correctly) assumes that each event is a new one, and so imports it.

Now the plug-in should delete any events that have been created by that feed which no longer appear it in. So in theory, all the ‘original’ events of the duplicate ones should be delete. However, I have noticed a bug by which non-published events are not deleted. As such you end up with duplicates.

But please note, that the real issue here is the fact the source is not using consistent IDs. Even with the bug in iCal sync fixed, on each sync Event Organiser would delete all the events in the feed and recreate them.

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