iCalendar (ics) or CalDAV support

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Can you tell me more about this? Specifically,, how would you like to see the ICS format integrated with Astrid?

I use Thunderbird/Lightning and I sync my calendar file (ics) to a webdav server (Apache module). Lightning stores tasks and dates in the ics file. If I change or add something it rewrites the whole (ics) file on the server. It would be cool if Astrid could do this as well! There are lots of people who want this functionality (http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=2361).

I cannot expand on what 0x said. I want my Android gadget to do what Lightning does.

this might come in handy - a CalDAV (webdav) client-library for Java:
http://code.google.com/p/caldav4j/

so let me clarify - you want Astrid to publish your task due dates as an ics file for consumption in Google Calendar / Lightning / etc?

hm. Sounds like a neat plugin idea :) it's can't be a high priority for me unfortunately, but Astrid 3 allows third-party devs to do something like this without too much trouble.

If you're looking to get task information into Lightning, though, there has to be a better way than roll-your-own-ics-server. For example, Remember the Milk, which Astrid works with, exports ics files - so you can have Astrid sync to rmilk, and then use the generated ics file with Lightning. That should meet your needs, no?

Yes that is the idea ;-). It would be really great if Astrid could read/write task information into a ics file.

There are all sorts of "Better" ways of doing calendars, however, this request is just after the following, which is simple, basic and works.

- Subscribe the application to a link like https://www.yoursite.org/calendar/mycalendar.ics
- Enter your username and password.
- The events and todos are picked up from the link and displayed

- The application edits one or more of the events/totos, or adds a new one
- The application rolls up a new updated ics file and sends it back to the URL

The ability to set the link to read-only would be very useful.

The ability to set the update rate, whereby the application goes out and gets a completely fresh copy of the ics file evey N minutes and redraws the events and todos as necessary, would also be very very useful.

The ability of the application to work on a purely local copy of the ics file as described above, is of very limited usefulness; this is supposed to be a quick and easy network shared calendar. Yes, there is nothing in the way of locking. Yes if two apps try and update the calendar at the same time, one of them will be lost. If you want to get round this then WebCal (a combination of iCalendar/ics and webdav locking) would be good, but in the first instance, just simple webdav and ics is all that is needed.

"so you can have Astrid sync to rmilk, and then use the generated ics file with Lightning. That should meet your needs, no?"

Sorry .. no.

The mechanism needs to seamlessly update the ics file in situ on the web server. Flinging updated ics files around by hand is simply not going to be a mechanism that people will use .. plus it is fraught with dangers. Do please bear in mind also that that ics contains both the todos AND the events. Having two completely separate mechanisms for two parts of the same file is also not functional.

@Andy M. that's exactly what I am looking for!

ok gotcha. If you can program, feel free to write a plugin for Astrid 3.x, this should be pretty do-able. I understand your request, but the use case here is pretty narrow so this will not be a development focus, I'm sorry! Thanks for using Astrid though. 3.x is being made pluggable to support requests such as these by third parties. People who want to can do this, and people who don't will never know it exists :)