Generating iCal files with ColdFusion
I’ve been using ColdFusion to generate and mail iCal (*.ics) files. This should be a cinch, as they are really pretty simple text files. However, when I receive the file in Microsoft Outlook 2007, I have no options to add it to my calendar and I see the following message: “As the meeting organizer, you do not need to respond to the meeting.”
This is peculiar, as my address is not the organizer specified in the iCal file, it is only the recipient of the iCal attachment. I’m going to keep looking into it, but I thought I’d mention it here in case anyone else is running into the same issue.
The two functions I’ve found online to assist in generating iCal files are:
- iCalUS (via CFLib.org)
- CF_ICAL (via Planet Source Code.
2 Comments to Generating iCal files with ColdFusion
Leave a comment
Pages
Archives
- January 2012
- December 2011
- November 2011
- September 2011
- August 2011
- July 2011
- June 2011
- May 2011
- March 2011
- February 2011
- January 2011
- November 2010
- May 2010
- March 2010
- January 2010
- December 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- July 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
- December 2008
- November 2008
- October 2008
- September 2008
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
I think this issue may have to do with how I was attaching the .ics file. I had been using a cfmailparam tag to specify the file and type (text/calendar).
When I switched to using the old method (the mimeattach attribute of the cfmail tag) Outlook 2007 let me add the meeting to my calendar. Perhaps this means that text/calendar isn’t the MIME type I should have been using.
Just tackled this issue myself, it is indeed caused by something in the headers. I didn’t quite work out exactly the problem was but fiddling with the headers resolved my problem. Posted up on it here -> http://www.julian-young.com/2009/07/07/php-ical-email/ (It’s PHP mind). I used the following for the overall message..
Content-Type: multipart/alternative
Content-class: urn:content-classes:calendarmessage
and
Content-Type: text/calendar;name=”meeting.ics”;method=REQUEST
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
for the iCal content. Hope that helps anyone else that stumbles upon this post!