JSCalendar: Converting from and to iCalendar
draft-ietf-calext-jscalendar-icalendar-00

Abstract

This document provides an informational guideline for converting JSCalendar from and to iCalendar.

Status of This Memo

This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.

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This Internet-Draft will expire on November 3, 2019.

Copyright Notice

Copyright (c) 2019 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the document authors. All rights reserved.

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Table of Contents

• 1. Introduction
• 1.1. Motivation
• 1.2. Scope and caveats
• 1.3. Notational Conventions
• 2. JSEvent
• 3. JSTask
• 4. JSGroup
• 5. Common properties
• 5.1. Time
• 5.2. Locations
• 5.3. Participants
• 6. Custom properties
• 7. Security Considerations
• 8. IANA Considerations
• 9. Acknowledgments
• 10. References
• 10.1. Normative References
• 10.2. Informative References
• Authors' Addresses

1. Introduction

1.1. Motivation

The JSCalendar [draft-ietf-calext-jscalendar] data format is used to represent calendar data, and is meant as an alternative to the widely deployed iCalendar [RFC5545] data format.

While new calendaring services and applications might use JSCalendar as their main data format to exchange calendaring data, they are likely to interoperate with services and clients that just support iCalendar. Similarly, existing calendaring data is stored in iCalendar format in databases and other calendar stores, and providers and users might want to represent this data also in JSCalendar. Lastly, some implementations might want to preserve custom iCalendar properties, that have no equivalent in JSCalendar when converting between these formats.

To facilitate these use cases, this document provides an informational guide how to convert JSCalendar data from and to iCalendar.

1.2. Scope and caveats

JSCalendar and iCalendar have a lot of semantics in common, but they are not interchangeable formats:

• JSCalendar contains a richer data model to express calendar information such as event locations and participants; while future iCalendar extensions may allow a direct mapping, for now there may be no representation directly in iCalendar of some properties and these have been marked as implementation specific for mapping.
• iCalendar may contain arbitrary, non-standardised data with custom properties/attributes. Translating these into JSCalendar is implementation specific.
• iCalendar has some obsolete features that have been removed from JSCalendar due to not being useful and/or supported in the real world (e.g. custom email alerts to send to random people). Translating these may lose some of the original fidelity.
• Implementations may use a custom property to store data that could not be mapped directly in either direction in the original or a custom format, however this is not interoperable.

Accordingly, this document does not standardize a canonical translation between iCalendar and JSCalendar, and implementations MUST NOT make any assumptions how iCalendar data is represented in JSCalendar by other systems.

1.3. Notational Conventions

The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in [RFC2119].

2. JSEvent

A JSEvent maps to the the iCalendar VEVENT component type [RFC5545]. The following tables maps the JSEvent-specific properties to iCalendar:

3. JSTask

A JSTask object maps to the iCalendar VTODO component type [RFC5545]. The following tables maps the JSTask-specific properties to iCalendar:

4. JSGroup

A JSGroup maps to a iCalendar VCALENDAR containing VEVENT or VTODO components.

5. Common properties

This section contains recommendations how to map JSCalendar from and to iCalendar. It lists all common JSCalendar object properties in alphabetical order.

5.1. Time

JSEvent and JSTask objects share the start, timeZone and isAllDay properties to express their occurrence in time. The following table defines how to map these properties:

5.2. Locations

The iCalendar counterpart for JSCalendar Location objects is the iCalendar [RFC5545] LOCATION property, or implementation-specific.

The iCalendar counterpart for JSCalendar VirtualLocation objects is the iCalendar [RFC7986] CONFERENCE property.

5.3. Participants

The following table outlines translation of JSCalendar participants. An iCalendar ORGANIZER maps to replyTo and a participant with role owner. If an ATTENDEE with the same CAL-ADDRESS value exists, then it maps to the same participant as the ORGANIZER participant. Other participants map to ATTENDEEs.

6. Custom properties

Mapping custom or unknown properties between JSCalendar and iCalendar is implementation-specific. Implementations might use vendor-extension properties, which could also serve as basis for discussion for a JSCalendar standard extension. Alternatively, an implementation could preserve iCalendar properties and components in JSCalendar by use of a vendor-extension property formatted as jCal [RFC7265] data.

7. Security Considerations

The same security considerations as for [draft-ietf-calext-jscalendar] apply.

8. IANA Considerations

None.

9. Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the members of CalConnect for their valuable contributions. This specification originated from the work of the API technical committee of CalConnect, the Calendaring and Scheduling Consortium.

10. References

10.1. Normative References

10.2. Informative References

Authors' Addresses