This is the 2nd in a series of posts about Google Apps for Domains, I’ve been evaluating it for a while. Today I’ll focus a bit on the XML feeds that Google Calendar outputs as a means of integrating it into other applications.<\/p>\n
It basically provides 2 types of XML – a private and a public one. The public one only works if you share the cal publicly and the other is for your own use to pull into apps of your own. Each calendar should have a private one.<\/p>\n
This sounds very interesting, so what’s the problem? Well there are some inconsistencies. On my two domains, the one has private URLs on the main calendar the other doesn’t have the option at all. So this means my primary calendar doesn’t have a XML feed unless I share it publicly. <\/p>\n
GCal also has a feature that mails you a short daily agenda, much like what you see if you hit the Agenda button. Problem is the agenda mail function ONLY reads from your primary calendar, it does not include events from any subscribed calendars etc. This means that one of the biggest selling points of Google for Domains is crippled, if you share calendars you can’t use them even in the rudimentary tools provided.<\/p>\n
I can’t use my primary private calendar with XML feeds, and I can only get events mailed from the primary calendar. Why is this a problem? I want to use the shared calendars with people I work with, that’s one of the major reasons to use Apps for Domains.<\/p>\n
On my iCal calendars I had a RSS feed that I’d pull into some perl code to generate agendas. I resigned myself to the fact that I’d need to write one myself again now for GCal and wanted to use the XML feeds. I can’t pull events into my primary calendar – it doesn’t have private feeds – so I had to create a new cal and use that – completely invalidating the in UI agenda function. I also can’t delete the primary function, the option is grey’d out.<\/p>\n
Back to the feeds, by default the data you’ll get in a feed looks like this for recurring events:<\/p>\n
\n\n<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>\n<entry xmlns='http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2005\/Atom'\nxmlns:gd='http:\/\/schemas.google.com\/g\/2005'\nxmlns:gCal='http:\/\/schemas.google.com\/gCal\/2005'>\n<id>removed<\/id>\n<published>2006-09-04T18:45:41.000Z<\/published>\n<updated>2007-03-15T23:50:18.000Z<\/updated>\n<category scheme='http:\/\/schemas.google.com\/g\/2005#kind'\nterm='http:\/\/schemas.google.com\/g\/2005#event'><\/category>\n<title type='text'>Cleaners<\/title>\n<summary type='html'>Recurring Event<br>\nFirst start: 2006-09-01 11:30:00 BST <br>\nDuration: 3600 <br>\nWho: Shared Calendar <br>\nEvent Status: tentative<\/summary>\n<content type='text'>Recurring Event<br>\nFirst start: 2006-09-01 11:30:00 BST <br>\nDuration: 3600 <br>\nWho: Shared Calendar <br>\nEvent Status: tentative<\/content>\n<link rel='alternate' type='text\/html' href='removed' title='alternate'>\n<\/link>\n<link rel='self' type='application\/atom+xml' href='removed'>\n<\/link>\n<author>\n<name>R.I. Pienaar<\/name>\n<email>rip@removed<\/email>\n<\/author>\n<gCal:sendEventNotifications value='true'><\/gCal:sendEventNotifications>\n<\/entry>\n<\/pre>\n<\/blockquote>\nHave a good look at that, this is the default feed output, it shows you details for a recurring event – when it was first created and how long it runs for. There is not enough information here for a human to actually figure out when this event is for, they do not give you any information about the schedule, this event may recur once a year, once a day, once a month you just don’t have any idea. You’ll see later that they have all the ability already to make this useful and user friendly, they just didn’t bother.<\/p>\n