Parse calendar (ICS) with AppleScript

Question

Iam having a hard time cracking this. I have read an ICS file into AppleScript and I need to parse it. This is my code

set calURL to "https://url.to.ics"
set calenderData to do shell script "curl " & calURL

The data reads in fine, but I need to parse it. I want the script to read data between BEGIN:VEVENT and END:VEVENT for every event. Iam not sure how to do this, but with a foreach loop or something?

Here is a sample calender containing my exams.

BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
X-WR-CALNAME:Eksamener
X-WR-CALDESC:
X-APPLE-CALENDAR-COLOR:#CC2B23FF
BEGIN:VEVENT
UID:C96EF18C-5D17-4170-8C67-832B7F90B464
SUMMARY:TK 1100 Eksamen
SEQUENCE:0
LOCATION:
DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20111213
DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20111214
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
UID:BDBE0B4B-FF3D-4245-B23F-F1BF25F65998
SUMMARY:DB 1100 Eksamen
SEQUENCE:0
LOCATION:
DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20111006
DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20111007
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
UID:21261AF0-FDA7-432B-B513-CC3A9C04393D
SUMMARY:PG 1100 Eksamen
SEQUENCE:0
LOCATION:
DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20111216
DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20111217
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR

This is not related to school, I just want to parse the data to view it on my desktop (GeekTool).

regulus6633 regulus6633 · Accepted Answer · 2011-11-07T17:26:15

You need to use text item delimiters. Try this and see if you can understand how it works.

set theData to "BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
X-WR-CALNAME:Eksamener
X-WR-CALDESC:
X-APPLE-CALENDAR-COLOR:#CC2B23FF
BEGIN:VEVENT
UID:C96EF18C-5D17-4170-8C67-832B7F90B464
SUMMARY:TK 1100 Eksamen
SEQUENCE:0
LOCATION:
DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20111213
DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20111214
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
UID:BDBE0B4B-FF3D-4245-B23F-F1BF25F65998
SUMMARY:DB 1100 Eksamen
SEQUENCE:0
LOCATION:
DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20111006
DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20111007
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
UID:21261AF0-FDA7-432B-B513-CC3A9C04393D
SUMMARY:PG 1100 Eksamen
SEQUENCE:0
LOCATION:
DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20111216
DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20111217
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR"

set text item delimiters to "BEGIN:VEVENT"
set theEvents to text items of theData
set text item delimiters to "END:VEVENT"

set allEvents to {}
repeat with i from 2 to count of theEvents
    set theEvent to item i of theEvents
    set trimmedEvent to text item 1 of theEvent
    set end of allEvents to text 2 thru -2 of trimmedEvent -- you can do something here instead of collecting them in the list
end repeat
set text item delimiters to ""
return allEvents

Parse calendar (ICS) with AppleScript

1 Answers