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I have a calendar (ie a set of events) that I would like to make publicly available with a technique that allows from as many platforms (windows,ios,android,...) as possible to subscribe/import to this calendar. I've been reading for a while on solutions for sharing calendars online and I am a bit puzzled:

  • sometimes you are told that all you need to do is to make an ics file online available; that seems logical to me, but that would mean that anyone adding this link in their calendar software always downloads the entire (large) ics file with all the events?
  • sometimes I read about CalDav which seemed to me more like an alternative to the blunt download strategy of ics. If I understood well, software able to handle CalDav links can sync in an intelligent way with a calendar server (but is there a lot of end-user software available to handle CalDav links?)

I found very little on the efficiency of making calendars available online, as well from the user point of view (not nice if you need to download the entire ics file on every read) as from the server point of view. Any help or insight in available techniques would be great.

Pete89
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  • How big IS your ics file? I think making that online available is the most portable solution available. – PhilMasteG Nov 02 '12 at 22:39
  • the file currently is nearly 500 kByte but size will only grow of course. One thing I can decide of course is only to share future events. But eg would somebody who subscribed to this ics file then see all past events disappear ? – Pete89 Nov 02 '12 at 23:37
  • Yes, they would usually disappear. How about splitting the files? I don't know your exact scenario so I can only guess. However, most clients will cache the ics file, so it's still accessible until the new download is finished. – PhilMasteG Nov 03 '12 at 00:19
  • actually the goal is to put a calendar online for a language school. Interesting activities are added by the teachers via a CMS and the goal would be to make them available for all students and other interested people. I could indeed split the files but I don't like the idea of dissapearing events. Is CalDav that little supported on clients? – Pete89 Nov 03 '12 at 09:21
  • Honestly, I once tried to set up some CalDav Server to have all my calendars synchronized, it was a mess though. My mobile phone did not support it, Thunderbird (Lightning) made funny things with it and so on. But if you really don't like the idea of ics files, this seems to be your method. The only service I found to be supported almost everywhere is Google Calendar, but you might want that even less then ics. – PhilMasteG Nov 03 '12 at 11:48
  • I hope this is not considered too much of a plug. This is our product: http://fruux.com/. We have free (caldav) accounts that allow you to sync with Thunderbird/Lightning, and then you can make calendars public (as an .ics feed). – Evert Nov 08 '12 at 12:46

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