Preparing OS X master disk images for student/staff/faculty Macs for the upcoming school year, decided it would be cool to give them some starter RSS and iCal subscriptions. I wrote an RSS generator for our events database quite a while ago, and realized it wouldn’t be too hard to modify the same PHP script to also spit out .ics with the same data. Used Apple’s Developer Connection page on writing to the .ics format and filled in a few blanks with the IETF’s documentation.
Hit a roadblock when iCal refused to subscribe my initial feed attempts, then realized they’re very serious about .ics having CRLF line endings. Tweaked that and it worked neatly.
Mac users click here for instant subscription. Other .ics users can subscribe manually via http://journalism.berkeley.edu/events/jschool_events.ics . (Note you currently have to go back to May to see any content; that will change as the next event cycle begins in September).
Very nice. I wish I was attending that school this fall.