org-caldav will cease to work with Google Calendar

org-caldav will cease to work with Google Calendar

[David Engster]

Google has announced today that they will shut down their CalDAV API in
September, since hey, everybody's using their own protocol anyway.
org-caldav will then cease to work with Google calendar. I won't work on
supporting the Google calendaring API until there's a free server
implementation for it, which can be self-hosted. If someone else would
like to work on that, please create a fork under a different name.

-David

Re: org-caldav will cease to work with Google Calendar

[Bastien]

Hi David,

David Engster <deng@randomsample.de> writes:

> Google has announced today that they will shut down their CalDAV API in
> September, since hey, everybody's using their own protocol anyway.
> org-caldav will then cease to work with Google calendar. 

:/

> I won't work on
> supporting the Google calendaring API until there's a free server
> implementation for it, which can be self-hosted. If someone else would
> like to work on that, please create a fork under a different name.

Are there already people interested in working on a free server
implementation of the Google Calendaring API?  Maybe a pointer for
those potentially interested on the list might be useful -- just
in case.

Thanks,

-- 
 Bastien

Re: org-caldav will cease to work with Google Calendar

[Torsten Wagner]

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Hi David,

first of all thanks again for your great contribution.

Maybe this is a good time to announce that we use org-caldav since several
weeks together with SoGO.
SoGO does allow syncing of Android devices too (via an App). It syncs full
automatically with the Android calendar!

It comes with a nice web-based calendar (better then what Google offers
IMHO)
It syncs with Thunderbird/Lightning.

I never tested but they claim iphone and Outlook support as well.
You can host your SoGO instance on your own server.

On top SoGO offers address-book and email capabilities (both syncing and
web-apps).

There are minor problems (on the SoGO side) but overall its running
perfectly stable for us.

In total, it made me move from Google to my own server, happily knowing
that annoyances  like personalized Google ads soon become irrelevant for
me. ;)

Just to catch the dropouts ;)

Torsten







On 14 March 2013 17:19, David Engster <deng@randomsample.de> wrote:

> Google has announced today that they will shut down their CalDAV API in
> September, since hey, everybody's using their own protocol anyway.
> org-caldav will then cease to work with Google calendar. I won't work on
> supporting the Google calendaring API until there's a free server
> implementation for it, which can be self-hosted. If someone else would
> like to work on that, please create a fork under a different name.
>
> -David
>
>

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Re: org-caldav will cease to work with Google Calendar

[David Engster]

Bastien writes:
> David Engster <deng@randomsample.de> writes:
>> I won't work on supporting the Google calendaring API until there's a
>> free server implementation for it, which can be self-hosted. If
>> someone else would like to work on that, please create a fork under a
>> different name.
>
> Are there already people interested in working on a free server
> implementation of the Google Calendaring API?  Maybe a pointer for
> those potentially interested on the list might be useful -- just
> in case.

Just to be clear, with "on that" I meant support for the Google API in
org-caldav. I think we should not play Google's game and start
supporting their proprietary API because they shut down their CalDAV
interface (which was crappy, but usable).

I don't know of any free calendar servers which are planning to
implement Google's API. Maybe it's not even allowed because of patents
or whatever.

-David

Re: org-caldav will cease to work with Google Calendar

[Julien Cubizolles]

David Engster <deng@randomsample.de> writes:

> Google has announced today that they will shut down their CalDAV API in
> September, since hey, everybody's using their own protocol anyway.
> org-caldav will then cease to work with Google calendar. 

That's very disappointing, org-caldav was the best tool I found to have
an efficient interaction between my Phone and org. Mobile-org is great
but unless I'm mistaken it doesn't provide the traditional grid view of
a calendar like the widget one can get for a Google calendar.

Thanks David for org-caldav.

Julien.

Re: org-caldav will cease to work with Google Calendar

[Charles Philip Chan]

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Julien Cubizolles <j.cubizolles@free.fr> writes:

Hi Julian:

> That's very disappointing, org-caldav was the best tool I found to
> have an efficient interaction between my Phone and org. Mobile-org is
> great but unless I'm mistaken it doesn't provide the traditional grid
> view of a calendar like the widget one can get for a Google calendar.

Mobileorg can sync (bi-directionally) with the native calendar system of
your Android device which in turn sync with Google. You can use any of
the Android calender apps that support the native Google calendar system
to view/add/modify. For example I use aCalendar and the "Executive
Assistant" widget.

https://github.com/matburt/mobileorg-android/pull/325

Charles 

-- 
"MSDOS didn't get as bad as it is overnight -- it took over ten years
of careful development."
(By dmeggins@aix1.uottawa.ca)

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Re: org-caldav will cease to work with Google Calendar

[Julien Cubizolles]

Charles Philip Chan <cpchan@bell.net> writes:

> Julien Cubizolles <j.cubizolles@free.fr> writes:
>
> Hi Julian:

> Mobileorg can sync (bi-directionally) with the native calendar system of
> your Android device which in turn sync with Google. 

Thanks for this info but according to the documentation "MobileOrg can
synchronize your TODO items that have a DEADLINE or SCHEDULE". It seems
not very practical in the case of an appointment where you don't
necessarily have something TODO except be there. Also how would you you specify
the start and end time of a meeting with a DEADLINE timestamp ?

> You can use any of the Android calender apps that support the native
> Google calendar system to view/add/modify. For example I use aCalendar
> and the "Executive Assistant" widget.

I was using Pure Calendar, quite good also.

Julien.

Re: org-caldav will cease to work with Google Calendar

[Sebastien Vauban]

Hi Julien,

Julien Cubizolles wrote:
> Thanks for this info but according to the documentation "MobileOrg can
> synchronize your TODO items that have a DEADLINE or SCHEDULE". It seems
> not very practical in the case of an appointment where you don't
> necessarily have something TODO except be there. Also how would you you specify
> the start and end time of a meeting with a DEADLINE timestamp ?

DEADLINE are not made therefore (repeated X days before the D day), nor
SCHEDULED entries (repeated after, until DONE).

Do you mean that MobileOrg doesn't support plain (active) timestamps?

Best regards,
  Seb

-- 
Sebastien Vauban

Re: org-caldav will cease to work with Google Calendar

[Charles Philip Chan]

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Julien Cubizolles <j.cubizolles@free.fr> writes:

Hi Julien:

> Thanks for this info but according to the documentation "MobileOrg can
> synchronize your TODO items that have a DEADLINE or SCHEDULE".

This is for TODO's. Mobileorg can actually sync anything with a
timestamp, ie: appointments.

> I was using Pure Calendar, quite good also.

I have used this in the past and I like it. However, I prefer the tab
interface of "Executive Assistant+".

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.appventive.ExecAssist&feature=search_result#?t=W251bGwsMSwxLDEsImNvbS5hcHB2ZW50aXZlLkV4ZWNBc3Npc3QiXQ..

cheers,
Charles
 
-- 
"The move was on to 'Free the Lizard'"

  -- Jim Hamerly and Tom Paquin (Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates)

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Re: org-caldav will cease to work with Google Calendar

[Julien Cubizolles]

"Sebastien Vauban"
<wxhgmqzgwmuf@spammotel.com> writes:

> Hi Julien,
>
> Julien Cubizolles wrote:
>> Thanks for this info but according to the documentation "MobileOrg can
>> synchronize your TODO items that have a DEADLINE or SCHEDULE". It seems
>> not very practical in the case of an appointment where you don't
>> necessarily have something TODO except be there. Also how would you you specify
>> the start and end time of a meeting with a DEADLINE timestamp ?
>
> DEADLINE are not made therefore (repeated X days before the D day), nor
> SCHEDULED entries (repeated after, until DONE).
>
> Do you mean that MobileOrg doesn't support plain (active) timestamps?

That's my understanding. I'd be happy to be proved wrong though.

Julien.

Re: org-caldav will cease to work with Google Calendar

[Julien Cubizolles]

Charles Philip Chan <cpchan@bell.net> writes:

> Julien Cubizolles <j.cubizolles@free.fr> writes:
>
> Hi Julien:
>
>> Thanks for this info but according to the documentation "MobileOrg can
>> synchronize your TODO items that have a DEADLINE or SCHEDULE".
>
> This is for TODO's. Mobileorg can actually sync anything with a
> timestamp, ie: appointments.

Of course you're right. I just gave it a try and it's working ! I didn't
try it lately because of the misleading (in my opinion) information in
mobile org wiki. This part of the documentation should be updated.

Julien.

Re: org-caldav will cease to work with Google Calendar

[Eric S Fraga]

David Engster <deng@randomsample.de> writes:

> Google has announced today that they will shut down their CalDAV API in
> September, since hey, everybody's using their own protocol anyway.

Oh, how annoying!  I finally, after several years of struggling, got to
the point where I was happy with the synchronisation between org,
desktop and phone.

Thanks for the heads up on this and, more importantly, for giving me at
least a glimpse, with org-caldav, of how good things could be.

-- 
: Eric S Fraga, GnuPG: 0xC89193D8FFFCF67D
: in Emacs 24.3.50.1 and Org release_8.0-pre-72-gc66641

Re: org-caldav will cease to work with Google Calendar

[Eric S Fraga]

Charles Philip Chan <cpchan@bell.net> writes:

[...]

> Mobileorg can sync (bi-directionally) with the native calendar system of
> your Android device which in turn sync with Google. You can use any of

Thanks for letting us know about this.  I now just have to wait until
MobileOrg supports ssh keys with passwords so I can use my own ssh
server.

-- 
: Eric S Fraga, GnuPG: 0xC89193D8FFFCF67D
: in Emacs 24.3.50.1 and Org release_8.0-pre-72-gc66641

Re: org-caldav will cease to work with Google Calendar

[Torsten Wagner]

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Hi Eric,

I can just repeat, if you have a own Server already, give SoGO a try!
The only disadvantage yet, the webinterface is not smartphone friendly.
However, sync works well.

Torsten
[1] http://www.sogo.nu/





On 15 March 2013 15:16, Eric S Fraga <e.fraga@ucl.ac.uk> wrote:

> Charles Philip Chan <cpchan@bell.net> writes:
>
> [...]
>
> > Mobileorg can sync (bi-directionally) with the native calendar system of
> > your Android device which in turn sync with Google. You can use any of
>
> Thanks for letting us know about this.  I now just have to wait until
> MobileOrg supports ssh keys with passwords so I can use my own ssh
> server.
>
> --
> : Eric S Fraga, GnuPG: 0xC89193D8FFFCF67D
> : in Emacs 24.3.50.1 and Org release_8.0-pre-72-gc66641
>
>
>

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Re: org-caldav will cease to work with Google Calendar

[Rasmus]

> I won't work on supporting the Google calendaring API until there's
> a free server implementation for it, which can be self-hosted.

Good choice!  I support you /fully/ on this decision.

I'd very much like to run an independent "OpenCloud"-like setup
(although, I don't need browser access).

For now I'm using fluux, but I haven't managed to get org-CalDAV to
sync yet.  I'm also looking to sync bbdb via CardDAV, although I would
be willing to switch to org-contacts if a solution emerged here
before.

Could Orgmode.org provide (and earn revenues from) a /standard-based/
(CardDAV/CalDAV) synchronization framework without bells and whistles
and a reasonable price per year?  Say €5-10 per year?  (I have no idea
how much upload/download goes to such a system).

I would certainly pay if revenues after costs goes to Org-developers
and the service uses open standards.

On the other hand I don't know if it's ethically OK for a FSF project
to provide such a service?

Baïkal and Radicale are nice, small CalDAV servers.  The latter also
provides CardDAV.

–Rasmus

-- 
Enough with the bla bla!

Re: org-caldav will cease to work with Google Calendar

[Marcin Borkowski]

Dnia 2013-03-15, o godz. 16:06:38
Rasmus <rasmus@gmx.us> napisał(a):

> Could Orgmode.org provide (and earn revenues from) a /standard-based/
> (CardDAV/CalDAV) synchronization framework without bells and whistles
> and a reasonable price per year?  Say €5-10 per year?  (I have no idea
> how much upload/download goes to such a system).
> 
> I would certainly pay if revenues after costs goes to Org-developers
> and the service uses open standards.
> 
> On the other hand I don't know if it's ethically OK for a FSF project
> to provide such a service?

AFAIR, one of the main ideas of RMS was to give away software for free
and earn on services.  (Not that I agree with all RMS's ideas - in
fact, I agree probably with a minority of them;).)

Best,

-- 
Marcin Borkowski
http://octd.wmi.amu.edu.pl/en/Marcin_Borkowski
Adam Mickiewicz University

Re: org-caldav will cease to work with Google Calendar

[David Engster]

'rasmus' writes:
> For now I'm using fluux, but I haven't managed to get org-CalDAV to
> sync yet.

What is that? I'm afraid I cannot find it.

>  I'm also looking to sync bbdb via CardDAV, although I would be
> willing to switch to org-contacts if a solution emerged here before.

CardDAV shouldn't be very hard to add. There are two reasons however why
at least I won't work on this in the near future: I don't need it, and
it's boring.

> Could Orgmode.org provide (and earn revenues from) a /standard-based/
> (CardDAV/CalDAV) synchronization framework without bells and whistles
> and a reasonable price per year?  Say €5-10 per year?  (I have no idea
> how much upload/download goes to such a system).

Frankly, I'd leave such services to professionals. Calendaring data is
very critical to most people. There are many CalDAV hosting services out
there (but I'm afraid you won't get a good one for 5-10 Euros/year).

> Baïkal and Radicale are nice, small CalDAV servers.  The latter also
> provides CardDAV.

I just discovered Radicale. I think it is very nice for people who don't
want/need a full-blown Workgroup or Cloud solution like SOGo/Owncloud.
org-caldav does not currently work with it, but this should be fixable.

-David

Re: org-caldav will cease to work with Google Calendar

[Vincent Beffara]

Hi, 

First Reader, then this ... that was a bad press release :-( OTOH there is already some support for google APIs via the g-client package. One drawback of the package is that it doesn't work very well, at least on my machine many commands fail. Another one is that it seems not to have moved a lot for years.

But it _can_ list my calendars, meaning that it can authenticate and have some sort of interaction with google's servers. Maybe interfacing with that would not be too hard? 

One repo here: https://github.com/jaalto/emacs-epackage--g-client (it is also in el-get).

/v

-- 
Vincent Beffara


On Thursday, March 14, 2013 at 17:19 , David Engster wrote:

> Google has announced today that they will shut down their CalDAV API in
> September, since hey, everybody's using their own protocol anyway.
> org-caldav will then cease to work with Google calendar. I won't work on
> supporting the Google calendaring API until there's a free server
> implementation for it, which can be self-hosted. If someone else would
> like to work on that, please create a fork under a different name.
> 
> -David 

Re: org-caldav will cease to work with Google Calendar

[David Engster]

Vincent Beffara writes:
> But it _can_ list my calendars, meaning that it can authenticate and
> have some sort of interaction with google's servers. Maybe interfacing
> with that would not be too hard?

Supporting the Google Calendar API in org-caldav wouldn't be hard. It's
actually a very clean, RESTful service; much better than CalDAV, in
fact. Just what you would expect from Google.

However, this is not a technical issue. This is also why I said that
anyone who wants to implement support for the Google Calendar API in
org-caldav should fork it; I won't accept pull requests which implement
that.

If Google decides to discontinue a well established, IETF-standardized
API in favor of a proprietary one for which there exist no free server
implementations, I will not support that. I think the best solution for
anyone using Google Calendar is to migrate away from that service.

-David

Re: org-caldav will cease to work with Google Calendar

[Rasmus]

David Engster <deng@randomsample.de> writes:

> 'rasmus' writes:
>> For now I'm using fluux, but I haven't managed to get org-CalDAV to
>> sync yet.
>
> What is that? I'm afraid I cannot find it.


Sorry, that's a typo.

     http://fruux.com.

It works with the aCal package which is in the F-Droid archive for
Android software.

>>  I'm also looking to sync bbdb via CardDAV, although I would be
>> willing to switch to org-contacts if a solution emerged here before.
>
> CardDAV shouldn't be very hard to add. There are two reasons however why
> at least I won't work on this in the near future: I don't need it, and
> it's boring.

Fair enough.  A natural place to add it is the ASynK package. . .

>> Baïkal and Radicale are nice, small CalDAV servers.  The latter also
>> provides CardDAV.
>
> I just discovered Radicale. I think it is very nice for people who don't
> want/need a full-blown Workgroup or Cloud solution like SOGo/Owncloud.
> org-caldav does not currently work with it, but this should be fixable.

What I would need would be something I can install as an unprivileged
user on a remote host.  For instance something that could be called
over SSH. . .  I could install/compile Radicale on my remote host, but
I don't know whether I would be able to access it when it's not
running as a 'root' service. . .

–Rasmus

-- 
Vote for proprietary math!

Re: org-caldav will cease to work with Google Calendar

[Vincent Beffara]

Hi,
> Supporting the Google Calendar API in org-caldav wouldn't be hard. It's
> actually a very clean, RESTful service; much better than CalDAV, in
> fact. Just what you would expect from Google.
> 
> However, this is not a technical issue. This is also why I said that
> anyone who wants to implement support for the Google Calendar API in
> org-caldav should fork it; I won't accept pull requests which implement
> that.

Actually I had a look at the API. It is indeed very clean, but there _is_ a technical issue, namely they limit access to a certain number of connections per day, and this is accounted per application rather than per user. Right now it is 10.000 a day, but just listing all events in a single calendar involves paging: for 200 or so events, I had to connect 7 times, and this counts as 7 connections.

I have no idea how many org users would actually sync with google using their proprietary API (given there is support), but reaching the limit would be very quick, and very problematic. [Admittedly it is not a technical issue on their side, but it would be on ours, somehow.]
> If Google decides to discontinue a well established, IETF-standardized
> API in favor of a proprietary one for which there exist no free server
> implementations, I will not support that. I think the best solution for
> anyone using Google Calendar is to migrate away from that service.

Agreed. Now to look for a replacement ... 

/v

PS: In the mean time, for those who sync only from org to gcal, the option of exporting an ics file and hosting it somewhere for google to subscribe to is still available, but it is far from being as good.

Re: org-caldav will cease to work with Google Calendar

[Eric S Fraga]

Torsten Wagner <torsten.wagner@gmail.com> writes:

> Hi Eric,
>
> I can just repeat, if you have a own Server already, give SoGO a try!
> The only disadvantage yet, the webinterface is not smartphone friendly.
> However, sync works well.

Thanks.  Although I do have my own server, I am restricted to only SSH
access.  Yes, I could tunnel etc. but that just makes things more
complicated (and I'm not sure if MobileOrg would support
tunnelling).  Even if I could get SoGO to use port 22, the sys admins at
work may not like me adding more services to my server as I had to get
special permission to make my system visible from outside in the first
place!

-- 
: Eric S Fraga, GnuPG: 0xC89193D8FFFCF67D
: in Emacs 24.3.50.1 and Org release_8.0-pre-107-g91a6ca

Re: org-caldav will cease to work with Google Calendar

[Vincent Beffara]

Hi list, 
> Agreed. Now to look for a replacement ...

For what it's worth: org-caldav works very well with iCloud, but finding the correct server settings is a bit non-trivial - which is certainly deliberate of Apple. Apple's support for CalDAV is not likely to go away soon AFAICT, so it might serve ...

Cheers,

/v

org-caldav will continue to work with Google Calendar (was: org-caldav will cease to work with Google Calendar)

[David Engster]

David Engster writes:
> Google has announced today that they will shut down their CalDAV API in
> September, since hey, everybody's using their own protocol anyway.

Well, Google has suddenly realized that not only is CalDAV an open
standard, but it's actually used outside the Googleverse. Who could've
known? Anyway, they will continue to support it [1], so org-caldav
should work with Google Calendar for the time being (read: until they
change their mind again).

-David

PS: I know that there are problems with org-caldav and the new
exporter. I'll switch to Org 8 soon and will then merge the pending pull
requests.


[1]
http://googledevelopers.blogspot.ca/2013/06/making-googles-caldav-and-carddav-apis.html

Re: org-caldav will continue to work with Google Calendar

[Eric S Fraga]

David Engster <deng@randomsample.de> writes:

> David Engster writes:
>> Google has announced today that they will shut down their CalDAV API in
>> September, since hey, everybody's using their own protocol anyway.
>
> Well, Google has suddenly realized that not only is CalDAV an open
> standard, but it's actually used outside the Googleverse. Who could've
> known? Anyway, they will continue to support it [1], so org-caldav
> should work with Google Calendar for the time being (read: until they
> change their mind again).

Thanks for the update!  

I've moved over to mobileOrg on Android for my synchronisation for now
but will likely come back to org-caldav sooner rather than later if/when
I upgrade my phone to something like Jolla.  I really do not like Android
(and iOS even less).

-- 
: Eric S Fraga, GnuPG: 0xC89193D8FFFCF67D
: in Emacs 24.3.50.1 and Org release_8.0.3-193-g334581

Re: org-caldav will continue to work with Google Calendar

[Eric S Fraga]

David Engster <deng@randomsample.de> writes:

[...]

> PS: I know that there are problems with org-caldav and the new
> exporter. I'll switch to Org 8 soon and will then merge the pending pull
> requests.

David,

What is the status on this?  I'm asking because my phone suffered a
mishap yesterday and so I'm needing to use your caldav-sync again to
keep my calendar synchronised instead of MobileOrg.  However, the sync
operation fails for me.  I'm using org v8; is this the cause?  The
failure is to do with UIDs not being found.  I can send a debug trace if
necessary.

Thanks,
eric
-- 
: Eric S Fraga (0xFFFCF67D), Emacs 24.3.50.1, Org release_8.0.3-193-g334581

Re: org-caldav will continue to work with Google Calendar

[Eric S Fraga]

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David,

just to follow up on my own email.  With the attached draft,
org-caldav-sync works for me now.

Thanks,
eric

-- 
: Eric S Fraga (0xFFFCF67D), Emacs 24.3.50.1, Org release_8.0.3-193-g334581

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diff --git a/org-caldav.el b/org-caldav.el
index 0383366..cd5b273 100644
--- a/org-caldav.el
+++ b/org-caldav.el
@@ -786,7 +786,7 @@ is no UID to rewrite. Returns the UID."
      ((re-search-forward "^UID:\\(orgsexp-[0-9]+\\)" nil t)
       ;; This is a sexp entry, so do nothing.
       (match-string 1))
-     ((re-search-forward "^UID:\\(\\s-*\\)\\([A-Z][A-Z]-\\)?\\(.+\\)\\s-*$"
+     ((re-search-forward "^UID:\\(\\s-*\\)\\([A-Z][A-Z][0-9]-\\)?\\(.+\\)\\s-*$"
 			 nil t)
       (when (match-string 1)
 	(replace-match "" nil nil nil 1))