Mese: Ottobre 2019

I. an old solution

Once I thought that the best solution was work with an ics online. The advantage of this is the possibility to access from any device (PC and smartphone). But there were many disadvantages, as I say afterwards.

I keep my previous steps, in casesomeone find it useful.

1) download the ics file

• sudo apt install python3-pip
• sudo pip3 install ics
• create the bash executable file, like this

with google

#!/bin/bash

wget -O diario.ics https://calendar.google.com/calendar/ical/[remote path]/basic.ics

with nextcloud

wget -O diario.ics https://ecloud.global/remote.php/dav/calendars/[vostra user(ad esempio la mail]/personal/?export –user=[il vostro user, come prima]–password=[la vostra password]

2) convert the ics to md

afterwards, after downloading the ics file (in the following example “personal.ics”) you have to concert it to a md file. You can use a code like the folowing, in a python file (we call here “convert-ics.py”) located or linked in the same folder of ics file:

from ics import Calendar

md_template = """
## {name} - {start}
{desc}
{location} 
_{categ}_"""

with open("personal.ics") as f:
   cal = Calendar(f.read())

print("# Diario")
for e in sorted(cal.events):
    print(md_template.format(start=e.begin.strftime("%Y-%m-%e"), name=e.name, 
                             desc=e.description, location=e.location, 
                             categ=e.categories))

and then

python3 convert-ics.py > /[local-path]/local-file.md

II. a new solution: working in local

There were two big disadvantages working on remote

• the privacy: on a remote server other could see my personal data; in local it is more difficult.
• the archiving: there was an impossibility to split the “remote” past (and archive it) from the recent one (at least I didn’t find the way to get this possibility).

Both these disadvantages are solved having my personal ics on local: a) the privacy, because in local I am the only allowed to see my data; b) the archiving, because I can split an ics. This second point deserves some explications.

How to split an ics

If you open an ics with a text editor you will see that items are not in cronological order, so splitting an ics to get the new items separated from the old ones is not simple.

Therfore I converted first of all my ics in a csv file, thanks to this (very “customizable”) site website: IndigoBlue. The resulting csv file can be order cronologically and then splitted.

Afterwards you have to convert the csv (splitted) files to ics files: the best website I found is Manas Tungare. It convert perfectly your csv in a ics. Be careful: the date format must be 2021/07/07 and not, i.g., 2021-07-07; read carefully the instructions, in particular the required columns (and its names).

Finally you can convert the ics-archive to markdown, following the above step (convert the ics to md).

III. new perspectives

As long as there are tons of issues with python and the above way to convert an ics to markdown, you could use a new way, quite simple and probably better: convert a csv file to markdown, using a tool like Kate and regex.