Can I sync calendar events with the Microsoft Graph API?

Question

I'm working with the Microsoft Graph api to try and sync calendar events from Outlook. I was looking at this article concerning the Outlook api, which suggested I add the header odata.track-changes to my request and I would receive a deltaToken, which I could use on a later request to fetch only those events which had been updated or created since the last sync.

I have been successful fetching events, but I'm not getting a deltaToken back :/

Is this only supported in the Outlook api? Graph's response has Preference-Applied: odata.track-changes, so it's acknowledging my header. Here's my sample request:

GET /v1.0/me/calendar/calendarView
    ?startDateTime=2016-09-01T00:00:00.0000000
    &amp;endDateTime=2099-01-01T00:00:00.0000000
    HTTP/1.1
Host: graph.microsoft.com
Authorization: Bearer XXX
Prefer: odata.track-changes
Prefer: odata.maxpagesize=3  //for testing
Cache-Control: no-cache

And my sample response:

{
  "@odata.context": "https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/$metadata#users('')/calendar/calendarView",
  "value": [
    {
      "@odata.etag": "",
      "id": "",
      "createdDateTime": "2016-08-04T14:00:25.8552351Z",
      "lastModifiedDateTime": "2016-08-25T14:43:54.9950828Z",
      "changeKey": "",
      "categories": [
        "Orange category"
      ],
      "originalStartTimeZone": "Eastern Standard Time",
      "originalEndTimeZone": "Eastern Standard Time",
      "responseStatus": {
        "response": "organizer",
        "time": "0001-01-01T00:00:00Z"
      },
      "iCalUId": "",
      "reminderMinutesBeforeStart": 15,
      "isReminderOn": true,
      "hasAttachments": false,
      "subject": "Closing on House",
      "body": {
        "contentType": "html",
        "content": ""
      },
      "bodyPreview": "",
      "importance": "normal",
      "sensitivity": "normal",
      "start": {
        "dateTime": "2016-09-08T19:30:00.0000000",
        "timeZone": "UTC"
      },
      "end": {
        "dateTime": "2016-09-08T21:30:00.0000000",
        "timeZone": "UTC"
      },
      "location": {
        "displayName": "245 E Main St",
        "address": {
          "street": "245 E Main St",
          "city": "Somewhere",
          "state": "NY",
          "countryOrRegion": "United States",
          "postalCode": ""
        }
      },
      "isAllDay": false,
      "isCancelled": false,
      "isOrganizer": true,
      "recurrence": null,
      "responseRequested": true,
      "seriesMasterId": null,
      "showAs": "busy",
      "type": "singleInstance",
      "attendees": [],
      "organizer": {
        "emailAddress": {
          "name": "",
          "address": ""
        }
      },
      "webLink": "https://outlook.office365.com/owa/?ItemID="
    },
    {
      "@odata.etag": "",
      "id": "",
      "createdDateTime": "2016-08-19T18:02:39.0607411Z",
      "lastModifiedDateTime": "2016-08-19T18:04:10.548447Z",
      "changeKey": "",
      "categories": [
        "Green category"
      ],
      "originalStartTimeZone": "UTC",
      "originalEndTimeZone": "UTC",
      "responseStatus": {
        "response": "organizer",
        "time": "0001-01-01T00:00:00Z"
      },
      "iCalUId": "",
      "reminderMinutesBeforeStart": 15,
      "isReminderOn": true,
      "hasAttachments": false,
      "subject": "Moving (off work)",
      "body": {
        "contentType": "html",
        "content": ""
      },
      "bodyPreview": "",
      "importance": "normal",
      "sensitivity": "normal",
      "start": {
        "dateTime": "2016-09-10T00:00:00.0000000",
        "timeZone": "UTC"
      },
      "end": {
        "dateTime": "2016-09-13T00:00:00.0000000",
        "timeZone": "UTC"
      },
      "location": {
        "displayName": "",
        "address": {}
      },
      "isAllDay": true,
      "isCancelled": false,
      "isOrganizer": true,
      "recurrence": null,
      "responseRequested": true,
      "seriesMasterId": null,
      "showAs": "oof",
      "type": "singleInstance",
      "attendees": [],
      "organizer": {
        "emailAddress": {
          "name": "",
          "address": ""
        }
      },
      "webLink": "https://outlook.office365.com/owa/?ItemID="
    },
    {
      "@odata.etag": "",
      "id": "",
      "createdDateTime": "2016-09-13T19:05:20.8438647Z",
      "lastModifiedDateTime": "2016-09-13T19:05:22.1899702Z",
      "changeKey": "",
      "categories": [],
      "originalStartTimeZone": "America/New_York",
      "originalEndTimeZone": "America/New_York",
      "responseStatus": {
        "response": "organizer",
        "time": "0001-01-01T00:00:00Z"
      },
      "iCalUId": "",
      "reminderMinutesBeforeStart": 15,
      "isReminderOn": true,
      "hasAttachments": false,
      "subject": "Coffee Break",
      "body": {
        "contentType": "html",
        "content": ""
      },
      "bodyPreview": "",
      "importance": "normal",
      "sensitivity": "normal",
      "start": {
        "dateTime": "2016-09-15T20:15:00.0000000",
        "timeZone": "UTC"
      },
      "end": {
        "dateTime": "2016-09-15T21:15:00.0000000",
        "timeZone": "UTC"
      },
      "location": {
        "displayName": "",
        "address": {}
      },
      "isAllDay": false,
      "isCancelled": false,
      "isOrganizer": true,
      "recurrence": null,
      "responseRequested": true,
      "seriesMasterId": null,
      "showAs": "busy",
      "type": "singleInstance",
      "attendees": [],
      "organizer": {
        "emailAddress": {
          "name": "",
          "address": ""
        }
      },
      "webLink": "https://outlook.office365.com/owa/?ItemID="
    }
  ]
}

I redacted anything I thought could be mildly sensitive. Ultimately, my Laravel app is trying to sync events starting 4 months back, and go forever into the future.

If there's a more efficient/better way to do it, I'm open to suggestions. If it matters, these results were generated with Postman. Any help or clarity on this is appreciated.

Captain Hypertext · Accepted Answer · 2016-12-16T23:52:43.903

I ended up using the odata filter like so:

https://graph.microsoft.com/beta/me/calendar/calendarView?startDateTime=2016-05-01T00:00:00Z&endDateTime=2099-01-01T00:00:00Z&$filter=type eq 'singleInstance' and lastModifiedDateTime eq '2016-09-20T07:30:00+00:00'

This will fetch all calendar events scheduled between 2016-05-01T00:00:00Z (May 1st, 2016, midnight, UTC and 2099-01-01T00:00:00Z (January 1st, 2099, midnight, UTC) where the event type is singleInstance (not a recurring event) and the lastModifiedDateTime is after the last sync (in this example, 2016-09-20T07:30:00+00:00).

A few pitfalls with this:

Obviously, this is not url encoded. You would need to do that.
Make sure the + in the lastModifiedDateTime example is properly encoded to %2B, otherwise the Graph API will treat it as a space and reject it.
If you don't filter out recurring events, you will get each recurring event from now until 2099. This is the nature of fetching a list of calendarViews as opposed to events.

If I could do this again, I would probably go back and just do the full calendar sync, which Graph supports (I believe). I just didn't want to sync the whole calendar, only a date range, but it seems that was a doomed endeavor.

But despite the lack of recurring events, it works.

UPDATE

I ended up scrapping this implementation mostly because of the continuing pitfalls I've encountered with maintaining data sync integrity, lack of recurring events, and etc. Instead, I pull calendar events in real time, and maintain a cache. Just some advice in case anyone else ends up in my situation.

Hey, can you help me and explain in more detail about what approach you went with? How did you manage fetching only updated events? Did you all pull all the events everytime? — Bhumit Mehta, Jan 12 '17 at 07:29
What I ended up doing was, instead of downloading their calendar events to my db, I fetch the events in real time when they visit the page using the same endpoint (calendarView). You can use the lastModifiedDateTime to get events modified after a certain time, but I don't need to since I'm not syncing anything (much easier). The user has a calendar which displays events from a couple different calendar services, including Outlook. So when they click on January, I fetch events from their Outlook calendarView that are in January, and store none of it on my server. — Captain Hypertext, Jan 13 '17 at 14:35

Can I sync calendar events with the Microsoft Graph API?

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