Network Working Group | M. Douglass |
Internet-Draft | Spherical Cow Group |
Updates: 5545,5546 (if approved) | May 4, 2017 |
Intended status: Standards Track | |
Expires: November 5, 2017 |
Event Publishing Extensions to iCalendar
draft-ietf-calext-eventpub-extensions-03
This specification introduces a number of new iCalendar properties and components which are of particular use for event publishers and in social networking.
This specification also defines a new STRUCTURED-DATA property for iCalendar [RFC5545] to allow for data that is directly pertinent to an event or task to be included with the calendar data.
This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet-Drafts is at http://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.
Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."
This Internet-Draft will expire on November 5, 2017.
Copyright (c) 2017 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the document authors. All rights reserved.
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document. Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as described in the Simplified BSD License.
The currently existing iCalendar standard [RFC5545] lacks useful methods for referencing additional, external information relating to calendar components. Additionally there is no standard way to provide rich text descriptions or meta-data associated with the event.
Current practice is to embed this information as links in the description or to add x-properties.
This document defines a number of properties and a component referencing such external information that can provide additional information about an iCalendar component. The intent is to allow interchange of such information between applications or systems (e.g., between clients, between client and server, and between servers). Formats such as VCARD are likely to be most useful to the receivers of such events as they may be used in other applications - such as address books.
The following properties are defined in this specification
In addition this specification defines a new PARTICIPANT component. Many people or groups may participate in an event. This component provides detailed information. Such participants may act as attendees to the event (or derived events) or may just provide a reference - perhaps for mailing lists.
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in [RFC2119].
Previous extensions to the calendaring standards have been largely restricted to the addition of properties or parameters. This is partly because iCalendar libraries had trouble handling components nested deeper than those defined in [RFC5545]
In a break with this 'tradition' this specification introduces one of these extensions as a component rather than a property. This is a better match for the way XML and JSON handles such structures and allows richer definitions.
It also allows for the addition of extra properties inside the component and resolves some of the problems of trying to add detailed information as a parameter.
The properties defined here can all reference external meta-data which may be used by applications to provide enhanced value to users. By providing type information as parameters, clients and servers are able to discover interesting references and make use of them, perhaps for indexing or the presentation of additional related information for the user.
The [RFC5545] LOCATION property provides only an unstructured single text value for specifying the location where an event (or task) will occur. This is inadequate for use cases where structured location information (e.g. address, region, country, postal code) is required or preferred, and limits widespread adoption of iCalendar in those settings.
Using STRUCTURED-LOCATION, information about a number of interesting locations can be communicated, for example, parking, restaurants and the venue. Servers and clients can retrieve the objects when storing the event and use them to index by geographic location.
These PARTICIPANT component is designed to handle common use cases in event publication. It is generally important to provide information about the organizers of such events. Sponsors wish to be referenced in a prominent manner. In social calendaring it is often important to identify the active participants in the event, for example a school sports team, and the inactive participants, for example the parents.
When a calendar client receives a calendar component it can search the set of supplied properties looking for those of particular interest. The TYPE and FMTTYPE parameters, if supplied, can be used to help the selection.
The main motivation for these properties has been event publication but there are opportunities for use elsewhere. The following use cases will describe some possible scenarios.
In putting together a concert there are many participants: piano tuner, performer, stage hands etc. In addition there are sponsors and various contacts to be provided. There will also be a number of related locations. A number of events can be created, all of which relate to the performance in different ways.
There may be an iTip [RFC5546] meeting request for the piano tuner who will arrive before the performance. Other members of staff may also receive meeting requests.
An event can also be created for publication which will have a PARTICIPANT component for the pianist providing a reference to vcard information about the performer. This event would also hold information about parking, local subway stations and the venue itself. In addition, there will be sponsorship information for sponsors of the event and perhaps paid sponsorship properties essentially advertising local establishments.
These additions also provide opportunities for the travel industry. When booking a flight the PARTICIPANT component can be used to provide references to businesses at the airports and to car hire businesses at the destination.
The embedded location information can guide the traveller at the airport or to their final destination. The contact information can provide detailed information about the booking agent, the airlines and car hire companies and the hotel.
eventc = "BEGIN" ":" "VEVENT" CRLF eventprop *alarmc *participantc "END" ":" "VEVENT" CRLF eventprop =/ *( ; ; The following are OPTIONAL, ; and MAY occur more than once. ; styleddescription / strucloc / strucres / sdataprop ; ) todoc = "BEGIN" ":" "VTODO" CRLF todoprop *alarmc *participantc "END" ":" "VTODO" CRLF todoprop =/ *( ; ; The following are OPTIONAL, ; and MAY occur more than once. ; styleddescription / strucloc / strucres / sdataprop ; ) journalc = "BEGIN" ":" "VJOURNAL" CRLF jourprop *participantc "END" ":" "VJOURNAL" CRLF jourprop =/ *( ; ; The following are OPTIONAL, ; and MAY occur more than once. ; styleddescription / sdataprop ; )
The following changes to the syntax defined in iCalendar [RFC5545] are made here. New elements are defined in subsequent sections.
This specification makes use of the LABEL property parameter which is defined in [RFC7986]
This parameter is defined by the following notation:
loctypeparam = "LOCTYPE" "=" param-value
This parameter is defined by the following notation:
restypeparam = "RESTYPE" "=" param-value
This parameter is defined by the following notation:
orderparam = "ORDER" "=" integer ;Must be greater than or equal to 1
This parameter is defined by the following notation:
schemaparam = "SCHEMA" "=" DQUOTE uri DQUOTE
STRUCTURED-DATA;FMTTYPE=application/ld+json; SCHEMA="https://schema.org/FlightReservation"; ENCODING=BASE64;VALUE=BINARY:Zm9vYmFy
This parameter is defined by the following notation:
participanttype = "PARTICIPANT-TYPE" "=" iana-token
This parameter is defined by the following notation:
scheduleaddress = "SCHEDULE-ADDRESS" "=" cal-address
This property is defined by the following notation:
styleddescription = "STYLED-DESCRIPTION" styleddescparam ":" ( ( ";" "VALUE" "=" "URI" ":" uri ) / ( ";" "VALUE" "=" "TEXT" ":" text ) ) CRLF styleddescparam = *( ; ; The following are OPTIONAL, ; but MUST NOT occur more than once. ; (";" altrepparam) / (";" languageparam) / (";" fmttypeparam) / ; ; the following is OPTIONAL ; and MAY occur more than once ; (";" other-param) )
The following is an example of this property. It points to an html description.
STYLED-DESCRIPTION;VALUE=URI:http://example.org/desc001.html
This property is defined by the following notation:
strucloc = "STRUCTURED-LOCATION" struclocparam ( ( ";" "VALUE" "=" "URI" ":" uri ) / ( ";" "VALUE" "=" "TEXT" ":" text ) ) CRLF struclocparam = *( ; ; the following are OPTIONAL ; but MUST NOT occur more than once ; (";" fmttypeparam) / (";" labelparam) / (";" languageparam) / (";" loctypeparam) / ; ; the following is OPTIONAL ; and MAY occur more than once ; (";" other-param) )
The following is an example of this property. It points to a venue.
STRUCTURED-LOCATION;LABEL="The venue": http://dir.example.com/venues/big-hall.vcf
This property is defined by the following notation:
strucres = "STRUCTURED-RESOURCE" strucresparam (":" uri) / ( ";" "VALUE" "=" "TEXT" ":" text ) CRLF strucresparam = *( ; ; the following are OPTIONAL ; but MUST NOT occur more than once ; (";" fmttypeparam) / (";" labelparam) / (";" languageparam) / (";" restypeparam) / ; ; the following is OPTIONAL ; and MAY occur more than once ; (";" other-param) )
The following is an example of this property. It refers to a projector.
STRUCTURED-RESOURCE;restype="projector": http://dir.example.com/projectors/3d.vcf
This property is defined by the following notation:
source = "SOURCE" sourceparam ( ( ";" "VALUE" "=" "URI" ":" uri ) / ( ";" "VALUE" "=" "TEXT" ":" text ) ) CRLF sourceparam = *( ; ; the following are OPTIONAL ; but MUST NOT occur more than once ; (";" fmttypeparam) / ; ; the following is OPTIONAL ; and MAY occur more than once ; (";" other-param) ; )
The following is an example referring to a VCARD.
SOURCE;FMTTYPE=text/vcard; http://dir.example.com/vcard/contacts/contact1.vcf
This property is defined by the following notation:
sdataprop = "STRUCTURED-DATA" sdataparam (":" text) / ( ";" "ENCODING" "=" "BASE64" ";" "VALUE" "=" "BINARY" ":" binary ) / ( ";" "VALUE" "=" "URI" ":" uri ) CRLF sdataparam = *( ; ; The following is OPTIONAL for a URI value, ; RECOMMENDED for a TEXT or BINARY value, ; and MUST NOT occur more than once. ; (";" fmttypeparam) / (";" schemaparam) / ; ; The following is OPTIONAL, ; and MAY occur more than once. ; (";" other-param) ; )
STRUCTURED-DATA;FMTTYPE=application/ld+json; SCHEMA="https://schema.org/SportsEvent"; VALUE=TEXT:{\n "@context": "http://schema.org"\,\n "@type": "SportsEvent"\,\n "homeTeam": "Pittsburgh Pirates"\,\n "awayTeam": "San Francisco Giants"\n }\n
This property is defined by the following notation:
participantc = "BEGIN" ":" "PARTICIPANT" CRLF partprop *alarmc "END" ":" "PARTICIPANT" CRLF partprop = *( ; ; The following are REQUIRED, ; but MUST NOT occur more than once. ; dtstamp / participanttype / ; ; The following are OPTIONAL, ; but MUST NOT occur more than once. ; created / description / last-mod / priority / seq / source / status / scheduleaddress / summary / url / ; ; The following are OPTIONAL, ; and MAY occur more than once. ; attach / categories / comment / contact / rstatus / related / resources / x-prop / iana-prop ; )
The following is an example of this component. It contains a SOURCE property which points to a VCARD providing information about the event participant.
BEGIN:PARTICIPANT PARTTYPE:PRINCIPAL_PERFORMER SOURCE:http://dir.example.com/vcard/aviolinist.vcf END:PARTICIPANT
The following is an example for the primary contact.
BEGIN: PARTICIPANT SOURCE;FMTTYPE=text/vcard; http://dir.example.com/vcard/contacts/contact1.vcf PARTTYPE:PRIMARY-CONTACT DESCRIPTION:A contact: END:PARTICIPANT
A PARTICIPANT component may represent someone or something that needs to be scheduled as defined for ATTENDEE in [RFC5545] and [RFC5546]. The PARTICIPANT component may also represent someone or something that is NOT to receive scheduling messages.
A PARTICIPANT component is defined to be schedulable if
If both of these conditions apply then the participant defined by the value of the URL property will take part in scheduling operations as defined in [RFC5546].
An appropriate use for the PARTICIPANT component in scheduling would be to store SEQUENCE and DTSTAMP properties associated with replies from each ATTENDEE. A LOCATION property within the PARTICIPANT component might allow better selection of meeting times when participants are in different timezones.
This section describes types of participation and provide registered values for the PARTTYPE property.
The following are some examples of the use of the properties defined in this specification. They include additional properties defined in [RFC7986] which includes IMAGE and LIVEFEED.
The following is an example of a VEVENT describing a concert. It includes location information for the venue itself as well as references to parking and restaurants.
BEGIN:VEVENT CREATED:20101116T145739Z DESCRIPTION: Piano Sonata No 3\n Piano Sonata No 30 DTSTAMP:20101116T145739Z DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20110315T150000Z DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20110315T163000Z LAST-MODIFIED:20101116T145739Z SUMMARY:Beethoven Piano Sonatas UID:123456 STRUCTURED-LOCATION;LABEL="The venue": http://dir.example.com/venues/big-hall.vcf STRUCTURED-LOCATION;LABEL="The venue": http://dir.example.com/venues/parking.vcf BEGIN:PARTICIPANT PARTTYPE:SPONSOR SOURCE:http://example.com/sponsor.vcf END:PARTICIPANT BEGIN:PARTICIPANT PARTTYPE:PERFORMER: SOURCE:http://www.example.com/people/johndoe.vcf END:PARTICIPANT END:VEVENT
Applications using these properties need to be aware of the risks entailed in using the URIs provided as values. See [RFC3986] for a discussion of the security considerations relating to URIs.
Security considerations relating to the "ATTACH" property, as described in [RFC5545], are applicable to the "STRUCTURED-DATA" property.
Properties with a "URI" value type can expose their users to privacy leaks as any network access of the URI data can be tracked. Clients SHOULD NOT automatically download data referenced by the URI without explicit instruction from users. This specification does not introduce any additional privacy concerns beyond those described in [RFC5545].
This document defines the following new iCalendar properties to be added to the registry defined in Section 8.2.3 of [RFC5545]:
Property | Status | Reference |
---|---|---|
PARTTYPE | Current | RFCXXXX, Section 6.1 |
SCHEDULE-ADDRESS | Current | RFCXXXX, Section 6.2 |
STRUCTURED-DATA | Current | RFCXXXX, Section 6.7 |
STYLED-DESCRIPTION | Current | RFCXXXX, Section 6.3 |
STRUCTURED-LOCATION | Current | RFCXXXX, Section 6.4 |
STRUCTURED-RESOURCE | Current | RFCXXXX, Section 6.5 |
SOURCE | Current | RFCXXXX, Section 6.6 |
This document defines the following new iCalendar property parameters to be added to the registry defined in Section 8.2.4 of [RFC5545]:
Property Parameter | Status | Reference |
---|---|---|
LOCTYPE | Current | RFCXXXX, Section 5.1 |
ORDER | Current | RFCXXXX, Section 5.3 |
RESTYPE | Current | RFCXXXX, Section 5.2 |
SCHEMA | Current | RFCXXXX, Section 5.4 |
This document defines the following new iCalendar components to be added to the registry defined in Section 8.3.1 of [RFC5545]:
Component | Status | Reference |
---|---|---|
PARTICIPANT | Current | RFCXXXX, Section 7.1 |
The following table has been used to initialize the participant types registry.
Participant Type | Status | Reference |
---|---|---|
ACTIVE | Current | RFCXXXX, Section 8 |
INACTIVE | Current | RFCXXXX, Section 8 |
SPONSOR | Current | RFCXXXX, Section 8 |
CONTACT | Current | RFCXXXX, Section 8 |
BOOKING-CONTACT | Current | RFCXXXX, Section 8 |
EMERGENCY-CONTACT | Current | RFCXXXX, Section 8 |
PUBLICITY-CONTACT | Current | RFCXXXX, Section 8 |
PLANNER-CONTACT | Current | RFCXXXX, Section 8 |
PERFORMER | Current | RFCXXXX, Section 8 |
SPEAKER | Current | RFCXXXX, Section 8 |
The author would like to thank Chuck Norris of eventful.com for his work which led to the development of this RFC.
The author would also like to thank the members of the Calendaring and Scheduling Consortium Event Publication technical committee and the following individuals for contributing their ideas and support:
Cyrus Daboo, John Haug, Dan Mendell, Ken Murchison, Scott Otis,
The authors would also like to thank the Calendaring and Scheduling Consortium for advice with this specification.
calext-v02 2017-04-20 MD
calext-v01 2017-02-18 MD
calext-v00 2016-08-?? MD
v06 2016-06-26 MD
v05 2016-06-14 MD
v04 2014-02-01 MD
v03 2013-03-06 MD
v02 2012-11-02 MD
v01 2012-10-18 MD Many changes.
2011-01-07
v00 2007-10-19 MD Initial version