Calendaring extensions N. Jenkins
Internet-Draft R. Stepanek
Obsoletes: 8984 (if approved) Fastmail
Intended status: Standards Track 13 May 2025
Expires: 14 November 2025
JSCalendar: A JSON Representation of Calendar Data
draft-ietf-calext-jscalendarbis-02
Abstract
This specification defines a data model and JSON representation of
calendar data that can be used for storage and data exchange in a
calendaring and scheduling environment. It aims to be an alternative
and, over time, successor to the widely deployed iCalendar data
format. It also aims to be unambiguous, extendable, and simple to
process. In contrast to the jCal format, which is also based on
JSON, JSCalendar is not a direct mapping from iCalendar but defines
the data model independently and expands semantics where appropriate.
Note
This note is to be removed before publishing as an RFC.
Differences from RFC 8984 are documented in Appendix A.
Status of This Memo
This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute
working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet-
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Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."
This Internet-Draft will expire on 14 November 2025.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2025 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
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Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.1. Motivation and Relation to iCalendar and jCal . . . . . . 5
1.2. Notational Conventions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.3. Type and Property Notation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.3.1. Type Signatures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.3.2. Property Attributes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.3.3. The @type Property . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.4. Data Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1.4.1. Id . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1.4.2. Int . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1.4.3. UnsignedInt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1.4.4. UTCDateTime . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1.4.5. LocalDateTime . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1.4.6. Duration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
1.4.7. SignedDuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
1.4.8. TimeZoneId . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
1.4.9. PatchObject . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
1.4.10. Relation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
1.4.11. Link . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
2. JSCalendar Objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2.1. Event . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2.2. Task . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2.3. Group . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
3. Structure of JSCalendar Objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
3.1. Object Type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
3.2. Normalization and Equivalence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
3.3. Vendor-Specific Property Extensions, Values, and Types . 16
4. Common JSCalendar Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
4.1. Metadata Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
4.1.1. uid . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
4.1.2. relatedTo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
4.1.3. prodId . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
4.1.4. created . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
4.1.5. updated . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
4.1.6. sequence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
4.1.7. method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
4.2. What and Where Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
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4.2.1. title . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
4.2.2. description . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
4.2.3. descriptionContentType . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
4.2.4. showWithoutTime . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
4.2.5. locations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
4.2.6. mainLocationId . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
4.2.7. virtualLocations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
4.2.8. links . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
4.2.9. locale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
4.2.10. keywords . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
4.2.11. categories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
4.2.12. color . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
4.3. Recurrence Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
4.3.1. recurrenceId . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
4.3.2. recurrenceIdTimeZone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
4.3.3. recurrenceRule . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
4.3.4. recurrenceOverrides . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
4.4. Sharing and Scheduling Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
4.4.1. priority . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
4.4.2. freeBusyStatus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
4.4.3. privacy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
4.4.4. organizerCalendarAddress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
4.4.5. participants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
4.5. Alerts Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
4.5.1. alerts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
4.6. Multilingual Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
4.6.1. localizations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
4.7. Time Zone Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
4.7.1. timeZone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
5. Type-Specific JSCalendar Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
5.1. Event Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
5.1.1. start . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
5.1.2. duration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
5.1.3. endTimeZone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
5.1.4. status . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
5.2. Task Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
5.2.1. due . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
5.2.2. start . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
5.2.3. estimatedDuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
5.2.4. percentComplete . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
5.2.5. progress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
5.3. Group Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
5.3.1. entries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
5.3.2. source . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
6. Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
6.1. Simple Event . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
6.2. Simple Task . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
6.3. Simple Group . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
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6.4. All-Day Event . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
6.5. Task with a Due Date . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
6.6. Event with End Time Zone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
6.7. Floating-Time Event (with Recurrence) . . . . . . . . . . 49
6.8. Event with Multiple Locations and Localization . . . . . 49
6.9. Recurring Event with Overrides . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
6.10. Recurring Event with Participants . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
7. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
7.1. Expanding Recurrences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
7.2. JSON Parsing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
7.3. URI Values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
7.4. Spam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
7.5. Duplication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
7.6. Time Zones . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
8. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
9. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
9.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
9.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
Appendix A. Differences from RFC 8984 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
A.1. Applied Errata . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
A.2. Obsolete Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
A.3. Reserved Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
A.4. Updated Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
A.5. New Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
1. Introduction
This document defines a data model for calendar event and task
objects, or groups of such objects, in electronic calendar
applications and systems. The format aims to be unambiguous,
extendable, and simple to process.
The key design considerations for this data model are as follows:
* The attributes of the calendar entry represented must be described
as simple key-value pairs. Simple events are simple to represent;
complex events can be modeled accurately.
* Wherever possible, there should be only one way to express the
desired semantics, reducing complexity.
* The data model should avoid ambiguities, which often lead to
interoperability issues between implementations.
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* The data model should be generally compatible with the iCalendar
data format [RFC5545] [RFC7986] and extensions, but the
specification should add new attributes where the iCalendar format
currently lacks expressivity, and drop seldom-used, obsolete, or
redundant properties. This means translation with no loss of
semantics should be easy with most common iCalendar files.
* Extensions, such as new properties and components, should not
require updates to this document.
The representation of this data model is defined in the Internet JSON
(I-JSON) format [RFC7493], which is a strict subset of the JSON data
interchange format [RFC8259]. Using JSON is mostly a pragmatic
choice: its widespread use makes JSCalendar easier to adopt and the
ready availability of production-ready JSON implementations
eliminates a whole category of parser-related interoperability
issues, which iCalendar has often suffered from.
1.1. Motivation and Relation to iCalendar and jCal
The iCalendar data format [RFC5545], a widely deployed interchange
format for calendaring and scheduling data, has served calendaring
vendors for a long time but contains some ambiguities and pitfalls
that cannot be overcome without backward-incompatible changes.
Sources of implementation errors include the following:
* iCalendar defines various formats for local times, UTC, and dates.
* iCalendar requires custom time zone definitions within a single
calendar component.
* iCalendar's definition of recurrence rules is ambiguous and has
resulted in differing interpretations, even between experienced
calendar developers.
* The iCalendar format itself causes interoperability issues due to
misuse of CRLF-terminated strings, line continuations, and subtle
differences among iCalendar parsers.
In recent years, many new products and services have appeared that
wish to use a JSON representation of calendar data within their APIs.
The JSON format for iCalendar data, jCal [RFC7265], is a direct
mapping between iCalendar and JSON. In its effort to represent full
iCalendar semantics, it inherits all the same pitfalls and uses a
complicated JSON structure.
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As a consequence, since the standardization of jCal, the majority of
implementations and service providers either kept using iCalendar or
came up with their own proprietary JSON representations, which are
incompatible with each other and often suffer from common pitfalls,
such as storing event start times in UTC (which become incorrect if
the time zone's rules change in the future). JSCalendar meets the
demand for JSON-formatted calendar data that is free of such known
problems and provides a standard representation as an alternative to
the proprietary formats.
1.2. Notational Conventions
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and
"OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in
BCP 14 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all
capitals, as shown here.
The underlying format used for this specification is JSON.
Consequently, the terms "object" and "array" as well as the four
primitive types (strings, numbers, booleans, and null) are to be
interpreted as described in Section 1 of [RFC8259].
Some examples in this document contain "partial" JSON documents used
for illustrative purposes. In these examples, an ellipsis "..." is
used to indicate a portion of the document that has been removed for
compactness.
1.3. Type and Property Notation
This section defines the notation for JSCalendar properties and
types.
1.3.1. Type Signatures
Type signatures are given for all JSON values in this document. The
following conventions are used:
*: The type is undefined (the value could be any type, although
permitted values may be constrained by the context of this value).
String: This is the JSON string type.
Number: This is the JSON number type.
Boolean: This is the JSON boolean type.
A: The value is of type A.
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A[B]: The keys are all of type A and the values are all of type B
for a JSON object.
A[]: There is an array of values of type A
A|B: The value is either of type A or of type B.
Other types may also be given; their representations are defined
elsewhere in this document.
1.3.2. Property Attributes
Object properties may also have a set of attributes defined along
with the type signature. These have the following meanings:
mandatory: The property MUST be set for an instance of this object
to be valid.
optional: The property can, but need not, be set for an instance of
this object to be valid.
default: This is followed by a JSON value. That value will be used
for this property if it is omitted.
defaultType: This is followed by the name of a JSCalendar object
type. A property value of JSCalendar object type is expected to
be of this named type, in case it omits the @type property.
1.3.3. The @type Property
Every JSCalendar object has the following JSON object member:
*@type: String* This is the JSCalendar type of a JSON object. It
MUST match the type name of the JSCalendar object of which the
JSON object is an instance of.
The purpose of the @type property is to help implementations identify
which JSCalendar object type a given JSON object represents.
Implementations MUST validate that JSON objects with this property
conform to the specification of the JSCalendar object type of that
name.
In many cases, the @type property value is implied by where the
object occurs in JSCalendar data. Assuming that both A and B are
JSCalendar object types:
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* An object that is set as the value for a property with type
signature A MAY have the @type property set. If the @type
property is not set, then its value is implied to be A.
* An object that is set as the value for a property with type
signature A|B (defaultType: A) MAY have the @type property set if
it is an instance of A. It MUST have the @type property set if it
is an instance of B. If instead the defaultType attribute is not
defined, then the @type property MUST also be set for A.
* An object that is not the value of a property, such as the topmost
object in JSON data (directly or as a member of an array), MUST
have the @type property set.
An object definition MAY require the @type property to be set
regardless of the above definitions, e.g. this document requires the
@type property to be set for the Event, Task and Group object types.
1.4. Data Types
In addition to the standard JSON data types, the following data types
are used in this specification:
1.4.1. Id
Where Id is given as a data type, it means a String of at least 1 and
a maximum of 255 octets in size, and it MUST only contain characters
from the "URL and Filename Safe" base64url alphabet, as defined in
Section 5 of [RFC4648], excluding the pad character (=). This means
the allowed characters are the ASCII alphanumeric characters (A-Za-
z0-9), hyphen (-), and underscore (_).
In many places in JSCalendar, a JSON map is used where the map keys
are of type Id and the map values are all the same type of object.
This construction represents an unordered set of objects, with the
added advantage that each entry has a name (the corresponding map
key). This allows for more concise patching of objects, and, when
applicable, for the objects in question to be referenced from other
objects within the JSCalendar object.
Unless otherwise specified for a particular property, there are no
uniqueness constraints on an Id value (other than, of course, the
requirement that you cannot have two values with the same key within
a single JSON map). For example, two Event objects might use the
same Ids in their respective links properties or, within the same
Event object, the same Id could appear in the participants and alerts
properties. These situations do not imply any semantic connections
among the objects.
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1.4.2. Int
Where Int is given as a data type, it means an integer in the range
-2^53+1 <= value <= 2^53-1, the safe range for integers stored in a
floating-point double, represented as a JSON Number.
1.4.3. UnsignedInt
Where UnsignedInt is given as a data type, it means an integer in the
range 0 <= value <= 2^53-1, represented as a JSON Number.
1.4.4. UTCDateTime
This is a string in the date-time [RFC3339] format, with the further
restrictions that any letters MUST be in uppercase, and the time
offset MUST be the character Z. Fractional second values MUST NOT be
included unless non-zero and MUST NOT have trailing zeros, to ensure
there is only a single representation for each date-time.
For example, 2010-10-10T10:10:10.003Z is conformant, but
2010-10-10T10:10:10.000Z is invalid and is correctly encoded as
2010-10-10T10:10:10Z.
1.4.5. LocalDateTime
This is a date-time string with no time zone/offset information. It
is otherwise in the same format as UTCDateTime, including fractional
seconds. For example, 2006-01-02T15:04:05 and
2006-01-02T15:04:05.003 are both valid. The time zone to associate
with the LocalDateTime comes from the timeZone property of the
JSCalendar object (see Section 4.7.1). If no time zone is specified,
the LocalDateTime is floating. Floating date-times are not tied to
any specific time zone. Instead, they occur in each time zone at the
given wall-clock time (as opposed to the same instant point in time).
A time zone may have a period of discontinuity, for example, a change
from standard time to daylight savings time. When converting local
date-times that fall in the discontinuity to UTC, the offset before
the transition MUST be used.
For example, in the America/Los_Angeles time zone, the date-time
2020-11-01T01:30:00 occurs twice: before the daylight savings time
(DST) transition with a UTC offset of -07:00 and again after the
transition with an offset of -08:00. When converting to UTC, we
therefore use the offset before the transition (-07:00), so it
becomes 2020-11-01T08:30:00Z.
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Similarly, in the Australia/Melbourne time zone, the date-time
2020-10-04T02:30:00 does not exist; the clocks are moved forward one
hour for DST on that day at 02:00. However, such a value may appear
during calculations (see duration semantics in Section 1.4.6) or due
to a change in time zone rules (so it was valid when the event was
first created). Again, it is interpreted as though the offset before
the transition is in effect (+10:00); therefore, when converted to
UTC, we get 2020-10-03T16:30:00Z.
1.4.6. Duration
Where Duration is given as a type, it means a length of time
represented by a subset of the ISO 8601 duration format, as specified
by the following ABNF [RFC5234]:
dur-secfrac = "." 1*DIGIT
dur-second = 1*DIGIT [dur-secfrac] "S"
dur-minute = 1*DIGIT "M" [dur-second]
dur-hour = 1*DIGIT "H" [dur-minute]
dur-time = "T" (dur-hour / dur-minute / dur-second)
dur-day = 1*DIGIT "D"
dur-week = 1*DIGIT "W"
dur-cal = (dur-week [dur-day] / dur-day)
duration = "P" (dur-cal [dur-time] / dur-time)
In addition, the duration MUST NOT include fractional second values
unless the fraction is non-zero. Fractional second values MUST NOT
have trailing zeros to ensure there is only a single representation
for each duration.
A duration specifies an abstract number of weeks, days, hours,
minutes, and/or seconds. A duration specified using weeks or days
does not always correspond to an exact multiple of 24 hours. The
number of hours/minutes/seconds may vary if it overlaps a period of
discontinuity in the event's time zone, for example, a change from
standard time to daylight savings time. Leap seconds MUST NOT be
considered when adding or subtracting a duration to/from a
LocalDateTime.
To add a duration to a LocalDateTime:
1. Add any week or day components of the duration to the date. A
week is always the same as seven days.
2. If a time zone applies to the LocalDateTime, convert it to a
UTCDateTime following the semantics in Section 1.4.5.
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3. Add any hour, minute, or second components of the duration (in
absolute time).
4. Convert the resulting UTCDateTime back to a LocalDateTime in the
time zone that applies.
To subtract a duration from a LocalDateTime, the steps apply in
reverse:
1. If a time zone applies to the LocalDateTime, convert it to UTC
following the semantics in Section 1.4.5.
2. Subtract any hour, minute, or second components of the duration
(in absolute time).
3. Convert the resulting UTCDateTime back to LocalDateTime in the
time zone that applies.
4. Subtract any week or day components of the duration from the
date.
5. If the resulting time does not exist on the date due to a
discontinuity in the time zone, use the semantics in
Section 1.4.5 to convert to UTC and back to get a valid
LocalDateTime.
These semantics match the iCalendar DURATION value type ([RFC5545],
Section 3.3.6).
1.4.7. SignedDuration
A SignedDuration represents a length of time that may be positive or
negative and is typically used to express the offset of a point in
time relative to an associated time. It is represented as a
Duration, optionally preceded by a sign character. It is specified
by the following ABNF:
signed-duration = ["+" / "-"] duration
A negative sign indicates a point in time at or before the associated
time; a positive or no sign indicates a time at or after the
associated time.
1.4.8. TimeZoneId
Where TimeZoneId is given as a data type, it means a String that is a
time zone name in the IANA Time Zone Database [TZDB]. The zone rules
of the respective IANA time zone records apply.
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1.4.9. PatchObject
A PatchObject is of type String[*] and represents an unordered set of
patches on a JSON object. Each key is a path represented in a subset
of the JSON Pointer format [RFC6901]. The paths have an implicit
leading /, so each key is prefixed with / before applying the JSON
Pointer evaluation algorithm.
A patch within a PatchObject is only valid if all of the following
conditions apply:
1. The pointer MUST NOT reference inside an array (i.e., you MUST
NOT insert/delete from an array; the array MUST be replaced in
its entirety instead).
2. All parts prior to the last (i.e., the value after the final
slash) MUST already exist on the object being patched.
3. There MUST NOT be two patches in the PatchObject where the
pointer of one is the prefix of the pointer of the other, e.g.,
alerts/1/offset and alerts.
4. The value for the patch MUST be valid for the property being set
(of the correct type and obeying any other applicable
restrictions), or, if null, the property MUST be optional.
The value associated with each pointer determines how to apply that
patch:
* If null, remove the property from the patched object. If the key
is not present in the parent, this a no-op.
* If non-null, set the value given as the value for this property
(this may be a replacement or addition to the object being
patched).
A PatchObject does not define its own @type property (see
Section 1.3.3). An @type property in a patch MUST be handled as any
other patched property value.
Implementations MUST reject a PatchObject in its entirety if any of
its patches are invalid. Implementations MUST NOT apply partial
patches.
The PatchObject format is used to significantly reduce file size and
duplicated content when specifying variations to a common object,
such as with recurring events or when translating the data into
multiple languages. It can also better preserve semantic intent if
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only the properties that should differ between the two objects are
patched. For example, if one person is not going to a particular
instance of a regularly scheduled event, in iCalendar, you would have
to duplicate the entire event in the override. In JSCalendar, this
is a small patch to show the difference. As only this property is
patched, if the location of the event is changed, the occurrence will
automatically still inherit this.
1.4.10. Relation
A Relation object defines the relation to other objects, using a
possibly empty set of relation types. The object that defines this
relation is the linking object, while the other object is the linked
object. A Relation object has the following properties:
@type: String (mandatory)
This specifies the type of this object. This MUST be Relation, if
set.
relation: String[Boolean] (optional, default: empty Object)
This describes how the linked object is related to the linking
object. The relation is defined as a set of relation types. Keys
in the set MUST be one of the following values, specified in the
property definition where the Relation object is used, a value
registered in the IANA "JSCalendar Enum Values" registry, or a
vendor-specific value (see Section 3.3):
first: The linked object is the first in a series the linking
object is part of.
next: The linked object is next in a series the linking object is
part of.
child: The linked object is a subpart of the linking object.
parent: The linking object is a subpart of the linked object.
The value for each key in the map MUST be true. The empty Object
value represents a "parent" relation, unless otherwise specified
for the object type.
1.4.11. Link
A Link object represents an external resource associated with the
linking object. It has the following properties:
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@type: String (mandatory)
This specifies the type of this object. This MUST be Link, if
set.
href: String (mandatory)
This is a URI[RFC3986] from which the resource may be fetched.
This MAY be a data: URL [RFC2397], but it is recommended that the
file be hosted on a server to avoid embedding arbitrarily large
data in JSCalendar object instances.
contentType: String (optional)
This is the media type [RFC6838] of the resource, if known.
size: UnsignedInt (optional)
This is the size, in octets, of the resource when fully decoded
(i.e., the number of octets in the file the user would download),
if known. Note that this is an informational estimate, and
implementations must be prepared to handle the actual size being
quite different when the resource is fetched.
rel: String (optional)
This identifies the relation of the linked resource to the object.
If set, the value MUST be a link relation type as defined in
Section 2.1 of [RFC8288] .
display: String[Boolean] (optional)
This is a set of intended purposes of a link to an image. The
keys MUST be one of the following values, another value registered
in the IANA "JSCalendar Enum Values" registry, or a vendor-
specific value (see Section 3.3):
badge: an image meant to be displayed alongside the title of the
object
graphic: a full image replacement for the object itself
fullsize: an image that is used to enhance the object
thumbnail: a smaller variant of fullsize to be used when space
for the image is constrained
The value for each key in the map MUST be true. If this property
is set, then the rel property MUST be set to icon.
title: String (optional)
This is a human-readable, plain-text description of the resource.
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2. JSCalendar Objects
This section describes the calendar object types specified by
JSCalendar.
2.1. Event
Media type: application/jscalendar+json;type=event
An Event represents a scheduled amount of time on a calendar,
typically a meeting, appointment, reminder, or anniversary. It is
required to start at a certain point in time and typically has a non-
zero duration. Multiple participants may partake in the event.
The @type (Section 1.3.3) property value MUST be Event.
2.2. Task
Media type: application/jscalendar+json;type=task
A Task represents an action item, assignment, to-do item, or work
item. It may start and be due at certain points in time, take some
estimated time to complete, and recur, none of which is required.
The @type (Section 1.3.3) property value MUST be Task.
2.3. Group
Media type: application/jscalendar+json;type=group
A Group is a collection of Event (Section 2.1) and/or Task
(Section 2.2) objects. Typically, objects are grouped by topic
(e.g., by keywords) or calendar membership.
The @type (Section 1.3.3) property value MUST be Group.
3. Structure of JSCalendar Objects
A JSCalendar object is a JSON object [RFC8259], which MUST be valid
I-JSON (a stricter subset of JSON) [RFC7493]. Property names and
values are case sensitive.
The object has a collection of properties, as specified in the
following sections. Properties are specified as being either
mandatory or optional. Optional properties may have a default value
if explicitly specified in the property definition.
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3.1. Object Type
JSCalendar objects MUST name their type in the @type property if not
explicitly specified otherwise for the respective object type. A
notable exception to this rule is the PatchObject (Section 1.4.9).
3.2. Normalization and Equivalence
JSCalendar aims to provide unambiguous definitions for value types
and properties but does not define a general normalization or
equivalence method for JSCalendar objects and types. This is because
the notion of equivalence might range from byte-level equivalence to
semantic equivalence, depending on the respective use case.
Normalization of JSCalendar objects is hindered because of the
following reasons:
* Custom JSCalendar properties may contain arbitrary JSON values,
including arrays. However, equivalence of arrays might or might
not depend on the order of elements, depending on the respective
property definition.
* Several JSCalendar property values are defined as URIs and media
types, but normalization of these types is inherently protocol and
scheme specific, depending on the use case of the equivalence
definition (see Section 6 of [RFC3986]).
Considering this, the definition of equivalence and normalization is
left to client and server implementations and to be negotiated by a
calendar exchange protocol or defined elsewhere.
3.3. Vendor-Specific Property Extensions, Values, and Types
Vendors MAY add additional properties to the calendar object to
support their custom features. To avoid conflict, the names of these
properties MUST be prefixed by a domain name controlled by the vendor
followed by a colon, e.g., example.com:customprop. If the value is a
new JSCalendar object, it either MUST include an @type property, or
it MUST explicitly be specified to not require a type designator.
The type name MUST be prefixed with a domain name controlled by the
vendor.
Some JSCalendar properties allow vendor-specific value extensions.
Such vendor-specific values MUST be prefixed by a domain name
controlled by the vendor followed by a colon, e.g.,
example.com:customrel.
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Vendors are strongly encouraged to register any new property values
or extensions that are useful to other systems as well, rather than
use a vendor-specific prefix.
4. Common JSCalendar Properties
This section describes the properties that are common to the various
JSCalendar object types. Specific JSCalendar object types may only
support a subset of these properties. The object type definitions in
Section 5 describe the set of supported properties per type.
4.1. Metadata Properties
4.1.1. uid
Type: String (mandatory)
This is a globally unique identifier used to associate objects
representing the same event, task, group, or other object across
different systems, calendars, and views. For recurring events and
tasks, the UID is associated with the base object and therefore is
the same for all occurrences; the combination of the UID with a
recurrenceId identifies a particular instance.
The generator of the identifier MUST guarantee that the identifier is
unique. [RFC4122] describes a range of established algorithms to
generate universally unique identifiers (UUIDs). UUID version 4,
described in Section 4.4 of [RFC4122], is RECOMMENDED.
For compatibility with UIDs [RFC5545], implementations MUST be able
to receive and persist values of at least 255 octets for this
property, but they MUST NOT truncate values in the middle of a UTF-8
multi-octet sequence.
4.1.2. relatedTo
Type: String[Relation] (optional)
This relates the object to other JSCalendar objects. This is
represented as a map of the UIDs of the related objects to
information about the relation.
If an object is split to make a "this and future" change to a
recurrence, the original object MUST be truncated to end at the
previous occurrence before this split, and a new object is created to
represent all the occurrences after the split. A next relation MUST
be set on the original object's relatedTo property for the UID of the
new object. A first relation for the UID of the first object in the
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series MUST be set on the new object. Clients can then follow these
UIDs to get the complete set of objects if the user wishes to modify
them all at once.
4.1.3. prodId
Type: String (optional)
This is the identifier for the product that last updated the
JSCalendar object. This should be set whenever the data in the
object is modified (i.e., whenever the updated property is set).
The vendor of the implementation MUST ensure that this is a globally
unique identifier, using some technique such as a Formal Public
Identifier (FPI) value, as defined in [ISO.9070.1991].
This property SHOULD NOT be used to alter the interpretation of a
JSCalendar object beyond the semantics specified in this document.
For example, it is not to be used to further the understanding of
nonstandard properties, a practice that is known to cause long-term
interoperability problems.
4.1.4. created
Type: UTCDateTime (optional)
This is the date and time this object was initially created.
4.1.5. updated
Type: UTCDateTime (mandatory)
This is the date and time the data in this object was last modified
(or its creation date/time if not modified since).
4.1.6. sequence
Type: UnsignedInt (optional, default: 0)
Initially zero, this MUST be incremented by one every time a change
is made to the object, except if the change only modifies the
participants property (see Section 4.4.5).
This is used as part of the iCalendar Transport-independent
Interoperability Protocol (iTIP) [RFC5546] to know which version of
the object a scheduling message relates to.
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4.1.7. method
Type: String (optional)
This is the iTIP [RFC5546] method, in lowercase. This MUST only be
present if the JSCalendar object represents an iTIP scheduling
message.
4.2. What and Where Properties
4.2.1. title
Type: String (optional, default: empty String)
This is a short summary of the object.
4.2.2. description
Type: String (optional, default: empty String)
This is a longer-form text description of the object. The content is
formatted according to the descriptionContentType property.
4.2.3. descriptionContentType
Type: String (optional, default: text/plain)
This describes the media type [RFC6838] of the contents of the
description property. Media types MUST be subtypes of type text and
SHOULD be text/plain or text/html [MEDIATYPES]. They MAY include
parameters, and the charset parameter value MUST be utf-8, if
specified.
4.2.4. showWithoutTime
Type: Boolean (optional, default: false)
This indicates that the time is not important to display to the user
when rendering this calendar object. An example of this is an event
that conceptually occurs all day or across multiple days, such as
"New Year's Day" or "Italy Vacation". While the time component is
important for free-busy calculations and checking for scheduling
clashes, calendars may choose to omit displaying it and/or display
the object separately to other objects to enhance the user's view of
their schedule.
Such events are also commonly known as "all-day" events.
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4.2.5. locations
Type: Id[Location] (optional)
This is a map of location ids to Location objects, representing
locations associated with the object.
A Location object has the following properties. It MUST have at
least one property other than the @type property.
@type: String (mandatory)
This specifies the type of this object. This MUST be Location, if
set.
name: String (optional)
This is the human-readable name of the location.
description: String (optional)
This is the human-readable, plain-text instructions for accessing
this location. This may be an address, set of directions, door
access code, etc.
descriptionContentType: String (optional)
This describes the media type of the contents of the description
property. Its requirements are specified in Section 4.2.3. If
this property is set, then the description property MUST be set.
locationTypes: String[Boolean] (optional)
This is a set of one or more location types that describe this
location. All types MUST be from the "Location Types Registry"
[LOCATIONTYPES], as defined in [RFC4589] . The set is represented
as a map, with the keys being the location types. The value for
each key in the map MUST be true.
coordinates: String (optional)
This is a geo: URI [RFC5870] for the location.
links: Id[Link] (optional)
This is a map of link ids to Link objects, representing external
resources associated with this location, for example, a vCard or
image. If there are no links, this MUST be omitted (rather than
specified as an empty set).
4.2.6. mainLocationId
Type: String (optional)
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This indicates which of the multiple entries in the locations
property can be considered the main location for the event or task.
A client implementation MAY choose to display this location more
prominently. The main location is undefined if this property is not
set or if its value does not match the key of any Location object.
4.2.7. virtualLocations
Type: Id[VirtualLocation] (optional)
This is a map of virtual location ids to VirtualLocation objects,
representing virtual locations, such as video conferences or chat
rooms, associated with the object.
A VirtualLocation object has the following properties.
@type: String (mandatory)
This specifies the type of this object. This MUST be
VirtualLocation, if set.
name: String (optional, default: empty String)
This is the human-readable name of the virtual location.
description: String (optional)
These are human-readable plain-text instructions for accessing
this virtual location. This may be a conference access code, etc.
descriptionContentType: String (optional)
This describes the media type of the contents of the description
property. Its requirements are specified in Section 4.2.3. If
this property is set, then the description property MUST be set.
uri: String (mandatory)
This is a URI[RFC3986] that represents how to connect to this
virtual location.
This may be a telephone number (represented using the tel: scheme,
e.g., tel:+1-555-555-5555) for a teleconference, a web address for
online chat, or any custom URI.
features: String[Boolean] (optional)
A set of features supported by this virtual location. The set is
represented as a map, with the keys being the feature. The value
for each key in the map MUST be true.
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The feature MUST be one of the following values, another value
registered in the IANA "JSCalendar Enum Values" registry, or a
vendor-specific value (see Section 3.3). Any value the client or
server doesn't understand should be treated the same as if this
feature is omitted.
audio: Audio conferencing
chat: Chat or instant messaging
feed: Blog or atom feed
moderator: Provides moderator-specific features
phone: Phone conferencing
screen: Screen sharing
video: Video conferencing
4.2.8. links
Type: Id[Link] (optional)
This is a map of link ids to Link objects, representing external
resources associated with the object.
Links with a rel of enclosure MUST be considered by the client to be
attachments for download.
Links with a rel of describedby MUST be considered by the client to
be alternative representations of the description.
Links with a rel of icon MUST be considered by the client to be
images that it may use when presenting the calendar data to a user.
The display property may be set to indicate the purpose of this
image.
4.2.9. locale
Type: String (optional)
This is the language tag, as defined in [RFC5646], that best
describes the locale used for the text in the calendar object, if
known.
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4.2.10. keywords
Type: String[Boolean] (optional)
This is a set of keywords or tags that relate to the object. The set
is represented as a map, with the keys being the keywords. The value
for each key in the map MUST be true.
4.2.11. categories
Type: String[Boolean] (optional)
This is a set of categories that relate to the calendar object. The
set is represented as a map, with the keys being the categories
specified as URIs. The value for each key in the map MUST be true.
In contrast to keywords, categories are typically structured. For
example, a vendor owning the domain example.com might define the
categories http://example.com/categories/sports/american-football and
http://example.com/categories/music/r-b.
4.2.12. color
Type: String (optional)
This is a color clients MAY use when displaying this calendar object.
The value is a color name taken from the set of names defined in
Section 4.3 of CSS Color Module Level 3 [COLORS] or an RGB value in
hexadecimal notation, as defined in Section 4.2.1 of CSS Color Module
Level 3.
4.3. Recurrence Properties
Some events and tasks occur at regular or irregular intervals.
Rather than having to copy the data for every occurrence, there can
be a base event with a rule to generate recurrences and/or overrides
that add extra dates or exceptions to the rule.
The recurrence set is the complete set of instances for an object.
It is generated by considering the following properties in order, all
of which are optional:
1. The recurrenceRule property (Section 4.3.3) generates a set of
extra date-times on which the object occurs.
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2. The recurrenceOverrides property (Section 4.3.4) defines date-
times that are added or excluded to form the final set. (This
property may also contain changes to the object to apply to
particular instances.)
4.3.1. recurrenceId
Type: LocalDateTime (optional)
If present, this JSCalendar object represents one occurrence of a
recurring JSCalendar object. If present, the recurrenceRule and
recurrenceOverrides properties MUST NOT be present.
The value is a date-time either produced by the recurrenceRule of the
base event or added as a key to the recurrenceOverrides property of
the base event.
4.3.2. recurrenceIdTimeZone
Type: TimeZoneId|null (optional, default: null)
Identifies the time zone of the main JSCalendar object, of which this
JSCalendar object is a recurrence instance. It MUST NOT be set if
the recurrenceId property is not set.
4.3.3. recurrenceRule
Type: RecurrenceRule (optional)
This a recurrence rule (a repeating pattern) for recurring calendar
objects.
An Event recurs by applying the recurrence rule to the start date-
time.
A Task recurs by applying the recurrence rule to the start date-time,
if defined; otherwise, it recurs by the due date-time, if defined.
If the task defines neither a start nor due date-time, it MUST NOT
define a recurrenceRule property.
A RecurrenceRule object is a JSON object mapping of a RECUR value
type in iCalendar [RFC5545] [RFC7529] and has the same semantics. It
has the following properties:
@type: String (mandatory)
This specifies the type of this object. This MUST be
RecurrenceRule, if set.
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frequency: String (mandatory)
This is the time span covered by each iteration of this recurrence
rule (see Section 4.3.3.1 for full semantics). This MUST be one
of the following values:
* yearly
* monthly
* weekly
* daily
* hourly
* minutely
* secondly
This is the FREQ part from iCalendar, converted to lowercase.
interval: UnsignedInt (optional, default: 1)
This is the interval of iteration periods at which the recurrence
repeats. If included, it MUST be an integer >= 1.
This is the INTERVAL part from iCalendar.
rscale: String (optional, default: "gregorian")
This is the calendar system in which this recurrence rule
operates, in lowercase. This MUST be either a CLDR-registered
calendar system name [CLDR] or a vendor-specific value (see
Section 3.3).
This is the RSCALE part from iCalendar RSCALE [RFC7529], converted
to lowercase.
skip: String (optional, default: "omit")
This is the behavior to use when the expansion of the recurrence
produces invalid dates. This property only has an effect if the
frequency is "yearly" or "monthly". It MUST be one of the
following values:
* omit
* backward
* forward
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This is the SKIP part from iCalendar RSCALE [RFC7529], converted
to lowercase.
firstDayOfWeek: String (optional, default: "mo")
This is the day on which the week is considered to start,
represented as a lowercase, abbreviated, and two-letter English
day of the week. If included, it MUST be one of the following
values:
* mo
* tu
* we
* th
* fr
* sa
* su
This is the WKST part from iCalendar.
byDay: NDay[] (optional)
These are days of the week on which to repeat. An NDay object has
the following properties:
@type: String (mandatory)
This specifies the type of this object. This MUST be NDay, if
set.
day: String (mandatory)
This is a day of the week on which to repeat; the allowed
values are the same as for the firstDayOfWeek recurrenceRule
property.
This is the day of the week of the BYDAY part in iCalendar,
converted to lowercase.
nthOfPeriod: Int (optional)
If present, rather than representing every occurrence of the
weekday defined in the day property, it represents only a
specific instance within the recurrence period. The value can
be positive or negative but MUST NOT be zero. A negative
integer means the nth-last occurrence within that period (i.e.,
-1 is the last occurrence, -2 the one before that, etc.).
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This is the ordinal part of the BYDAY value in iCalendar (e.g.,
1 or -3).
byMonthDay: Int[] (optional)
These are the days of the month on which to repeat. Valid values
are between 1 and the maximum number of days any month may have in
the calendar given by the rscale property and the negative values
of these numbers. For example, in the Gregorian calendar, valid
values are 1 to 31 and -31 to -1. Negative values offset from the
end of the month. The array MUST have at least one entry if
included.
This is the BYMONTHDAY part in iCalendar.
byMonth: String[] (optional)
These are the months in which to repeat. Each entry is a string
representation of a number, starting from "1" for the first month
in the calendar (e.g., "1" means January with the Gregorian
calendar), with an optional "L" suffix (see [RFC7529]) for leap
months (this MUST be uppercase, e.g., "3L"). The array MUST have
at least one entry if included.
This is the BYMONTH part from iCalendar.
byYearDay: Int[] (optional)
These are the days of the year on which to repeat. Valid values
are between 1 and the maximum number of days any year may have in
the calendar given by the rscale property and the negative values
of these numbers. For example, in the Gregorian calendar, valid
values are 1 to 366 and -366 to -1. Negative values offset from
the end of the year. The array MUST have at least one entry if
included.
This is the BYYEARDAY part from iCalendar.
byWeekNo: Int[] (optional)
These are the weeks of the year in which to repeat. Valid values
are between 1 and the maximum number of weeks any year may have in
the calendar given by the rscale property and the negative values
of these numbers. For example, in the Gregorian calendar, valid
values are 1 to 53 and -53 to -1. The array MUST have at least
one entry if included.
This is the BYWEEKNO part from iCalendar.
byHour: UnsignedInt[] (optional)
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These are the hours of the day in which to repeat. Valid values
are 0 to 23. The array MUST have at least one entry if included.
This is the BYHOUR part from iCalendar.
byMinute: UnsignedInt[] (optional)
These are the minutes of the hour in which to repeat. Valid
values are 0 to 59. The array MUST have at least one entry if
included.
This is the BYMINUTE part from iCalendar.
bySecond: UnsignedInt[] (optional)
These are the seconds of the minute in which to repeat. Valid
values are 0 to 60. The array MUST have at least one entry if
included.
This is the BYSECOND part from iCalendar.
bySetPosition: Int[] (optional)
These are the occurrences within the recurrence interval to
include in the final results. Negative values offset from the end
of the list of occurrences. The array MUST have at least one
entry if included. This is the BYSETPOS part from iCalendar.
count: UnsignedInt (optional)
These are the number of occurrences at which to range-bound the
recurrence. This MUST NOT be included if an until property is
specified.
This is the COUNT part from iCalendar.
until: LocalDateTime (optional)
These are the date-time at which to finish recurring. The last
occurrence is on or before this date-time. This MUST NOT be
included if a count property is specified. Note that if not
specified otherwise for a specific JSCalendar object, this date is
to be interpreted in the time zone specified in the JSCalendar
object's timeZone property.
This is the UNTIL part from iCalendar.
4.3.3.1. Interpreting Recurrence Rules
A recurrence rule specifies a set of date-times for recurring
calendar objects. A recurrence rule has the following semantics.
Note that wherever "year", "month", or "day of month" is used, this
is within the calendar system given by the rscale property, which
defaults to "gregorian" if omitted.
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1. A set of candidates is generated. This is every second within a
period defined by the frequency property value:
yearly: every second from midnight on the first day of a year
(inclusive) to midnight the first day of the following year
(exclusive).
If skip is not "omit", the calendar system has leap months,
and there is a byMonth property, generate candidates for the
leap months, even if they don't occur in this year.
If skip is not "omit" and there is a byMonthDay property,
presume each month has the maximum number of days any month
may have in this calendar system when generating candidates,
even if it's more than this month actually has.
monthly: every second from midnight on the first day of a month
(inclusive) to midnight on the first of the following month
(exclusive).
If skip is not "omit" and there is a byMonthDay property,
presume the month has the maximum number of days any month may
have in this calendar system when generating candidates, even
if it's more than this month actually has.
weekly: every second from midnight (inclusive) on the first day
of the week (as defined by the firstDayOfWeek property or
Monday if omitted) to midnight seven days later (exclusive).
daily: every second from midnight at the start of the day
(inclusive) to midnight at the end of the day (exclusive).
hourly: every second from the beginning of the hour (inclusive)
to the beginning of the next hour (exclusive).
minutely: every second from the beginning of the minute
(inclusive) to the beginning of the next minute (exclusive).
secondly: only the second itself.
2. Each date-time candidate is compared against all of the byX
properties of the rule except bySetPosition. If any property in
the rule does not match the date-time, the date-time is
eliminated. Each byX property is an array; the date-time matches
the property if it matches any of the values in the array. The
properties have the following semantics:
byMonth: The date-time is in the given month.
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byWeekNo: The date-time is in the nth week of the year.
Negative numbers mean the nth last week of the year. This
corresponds to weeks according to week numbering, as defined
in ISO.8601.2004, with a week defined as a seven-day period,
starting on the firstDayOfWeek property value or Monday if
omitted. Week number one of the calendar year is the first
week that contains at least four days in that calendar year.
If the date-time is not valid (this may happen when generating
candidates with a skip property in effect), it is always
eliminated by this property.
byYearDay: The date-time is on the nth day of year. Negative
numbers mean the nth last day of the year.
If the date-time is not valid (this may happen when generating
candidates with a skip property in effect), it is always
eliminated by this property.
byMonthDay: The date-time is on the given day of the month.
Negative numbers mean the nth last day of the month.
byDay: The date-time is on the given day of the week. If the
day is prefixed by a number, it is the nth occurrence of that
day of the week within the month (if frequency is monthly) or
year (if frequency is yearly). Negative numbers mean the nth
last occurrence within that period.
byHour: The date-time has the given hour value.
byMinute: The date-time has the given minute value.
bySecond: The date-time has the given second value.
If a skip property is defined and is not "omit", there may be
candidates that do not correspond to valid dates (e.g., February
31st in the Gregorian calendar). In this case, the properties
MUST be considered in the order above, and:
1. After applying the byMonth filter, if the candidate's month
is invalid for the given year, increment it (if skip is
"forward") or decrement it (if skip is "backward") until a
valid month is found, incrementing/decrementing the year as
well if passing through the beginning/end of the year. This
only applies to calendar systems with leap months.
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2. After applying the byMonthDay filter, if the day of the month
is invalid for the given month and year, change the date to
the first day of the next month (if skip is "forward") or the
last day of the current month (if skip is "backward").
3. If any valid date produced after applying the skip is already
a candidate, eliminate the duplicate. (For example, after
adjusting, February 30th and February 31st would both become
the same "real" date, so one is eliminated as a duplicate.)
3. If a bySetPosition property is included, this is now applied to
the ordered list of remaining dates. This property specifies the
indexes of date-times to keep; all others should be eliminated.
Negative numbers are indexed from the end of the list, with -1
being the last item, -2 the second from last, etc.
4. Any date-times before the start date of the event are eliminated
(see below for why this might be needed).
5. If a skip property is included and is not "omit", eliminate any
date-times that have already been produced by previous iterations
of the algorithm. (This is not possible if skip is "omit".)
6. If further dates are required (we have not reached the until date
or count limit), skip the next (interval - 1) sets of candidates,
then continue from step 1.
When determining the set of occurrence dates for an event or task,
the following extra rules must be applied:
1. The initial date-time to which the rule is applied (the start
date-time for events or the start or due date-time for tasks) is
always the first occurrence in the expansion (and is counted if
the recurrence is limited by a count property), even if it would
normally not match the rule.
2. The first set of candidates to consider is that which would
contain the initial date-time. This means the first set may
include candidates before the initial date-time; such candidates
are eliminated from the results in step 4 of the list above.
3. The following properties MUST be implicitly added to the rule
under the given conditions:
* If frequency is not secondly and there is no bySecond
property, add a bySecond property with the sole value being
the seconds value of the initial date-time.
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* If frequency is not secondly or minutely and there is no
byMinute property, add a byMinute property with the sole value
being the minutes value of the initial date-time.
* If frequency is not secondly, minutely, or hourly and there is
no byHour property, add a byHour property with the sole value
being the hours value of the initial date-time.
* If frequency is weekly and there is no byDay property, add a
byDay property with the sole value being the day of the week
of the initial date-time.
* If frequency is monthly and there is no byDay property and no
byMonthDay property, add a byMonthDay property with the sole
value being the day of the month of the initial date-time.
* If frequency is yearly and there is no byYearDay property:
- If there are no byMonth or byWeekNo properties, and either
there is a byMonthDay property or there is no byDay
property, add a byMonth property with the sole value being
the month of the initial date-time.
- If there are no byMonthDay, byWeekNo, or byDay properties,
add a byMonthDay property with the sole value being the day
of the month of the initial date-time.
- If there is a byWeekNo property and no byMonthDay or byDay
properties, add a byDay property with the sole value being
the day of the week of the initial date-time.
4.3.4. recurrenceOverrides
Type: LocalDateTime[PatchObject] (optional)
Maps recurrence ids (the date-time produced by the recurrence rule)
to the overridden properties of the recurrence instance.
If the recurrence id does not match a date-time from the recurrence
rule (or no rule is specified), it is to be treated as an additional
occurrence (like an RDATE from iCalendar). The patch object may
often be empty in this case.
If the occurrence generated by the recurrence id shall be omitted
from the final set of recurrences (like an EXDATE from iCalendar),
then the patch object MUST be a JSON object with a single member.
The member name MUST be "excluded", the member value MUST be true.
The JSON object MUST NOT contain any other members.
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By default, an occurrence inherits all properties from the main
object except the start (or due) date-time, which is shifted to match
the recurrence id LocalDateTime. However, individual properties of
the occurrence can be modified by a patch or multiple patches. It is
valid to patch the start property value, and this patch takes
precedence over the value generated from the recurrence id. Both the
recurrence id as well as the patched start date-time may occur before
the original JSCalendar object's start or due date.
A pointer in the PatchObject MUST be ignored if it starts with one of
the following prefixes:
* @type
* method
* organizerCalendarAddress
* participants/*/calendarAddress
* privacy
* prodId
* recurrenceId
* recurrenceIdTimeZone
* recurrenceOverrides
* recurrenceRule
* relatedTo
* uid
4.4. Sharing and Scheduling Properties
4.4.1. priority
Type: Int (optional, default: 0)
This specifies a priority for the calendar object. This may be used
as part of scheduling systems to help resolve conflicts for a time
period.
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The priority is specified as an integer in the range 0 to 9. A value
of 0 specifies an undefined priority, for which the treatment will
vary by situation. A value of 1 is the highest priority. A value of
2 is the second highest priority. Subsequent numbers specify a
decreasing ordinal priority. A value of 9 is the lowest priority.
Other integer values are reserved for future use.
4.4.2. freeBusyStatus
Type: String (optional, default: busy)
This specifies how this calendar object should be treated when
calculating free-busy state. This MUST be one of the following
values, another value registered in the IANA "JSCalendar Enum Values"
registry, or a vendor-specific value (see Section 3.3):
free: The object should be ignored when calculating whether the user
is busy.
busy: The object should be included when calculating whether the
user is busy.
4.4.3. privacy
Type: String (optional, default: public)
Calendar objects are normally collected together and may be shared
with other users. The privacy property allows the object owner to
indicate that it should not be shared or should only have the time
information shared but the details withheld. Enforcement of the
restrictions indicated by this property is up to the API via which
this object is accessed.
This property MUST NOT affect the information sent to scheduled
participants; it is only interpreted by protocols that share the
calendar objects belonging to one user with other users.
The value MUST be one of the following values, another value
registered in the IANA "JSCalendar Enum Values" registry, or a
vendor-specific value (see Section 3.3). Any value the client or
server doesn't understand should be preserved but treated as
equivalent to private.
public: The full details of the object are visible to those whom the
object's calendar is shared with.
private: The details of the object are hidden; only the basic time
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and metadata are shared. The following properties MAY be shared;
any other properties MUST NOT be shared:
* @type
* created
* due
* duration
* estimatedDuration
* freeBusyStatus
* privacy
* recurrenceId
* recurrenceIdTimeZone
* recurrenceOverrides (Only patches that apply to another
permissible property are allowed to be shared.)
* recurrenceRule
* sequence
* showWithoutTime
* start
* timeZone
* uid
* updated
secret: The object is hidden completely (as though it did not exist)
when the calendar this object is in is shared.
4.4.4. organizerCalendarAddress
Type: String (optional)
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This is a URI as defined by [RFC3986] or any other IANA-registered
form for a URI. It is the same as the CAL-ADDRESS value of an
iCalendar ORGANIZER property [RFC5545] (Section 3.8.4.3) — it
globally identifies a particular organizer, even across different
calendaring objects.
4.4.5. participants
Type: Id[Participant] (optional)
This is a map of participant ids to participants, describing their
participation in the calendar object.
If this property is set and any participant has a calendarAddress
property set, then the organizerCalendarAddress property of this
calendar object MUST be set.
A Participant object has the following properties:
@type: String (mandatory)
This specifies the type of this object. This MUST be Participant,
if set.
name: String (optional)
This is the display name of the participant (e.g., "Joe Bloggs").
email: String (optional)
This is the email address to use to contact the participant or,
for example, match with an address book entry. If set, the value
MUST be a valid addr-spec value as defined in Section 3.4.1 of
[RFC5322] .
description: String (optional)
This is a plain-text description of this participant. For
example, this may include more information about their role in the
event or how best to contact them.
calendarAddress: String (optional)
This is a URI as defined by [RFC3986] or any other IANA-registered
form for a URI. It is the same as the CAL-ADDRESS value of an
iCalendar ATTENDEE property [RFC5545] (Section 3.8.4.1) or
ORGANIZER property [RFC5545] (Section 3.8.4.3) — it globally
identifies a particular participant, even across different
calendaring objects.
kind: String (optional)
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This is what kind of entity this participant is, if known. If
this property is set, then the calendarAddress property MUST be
set. The value MUST be one of the following values, another value
registered in the IANA "JSCalendar Enum Values" registry, or a
vendor-specific value (see Section 3.3). Any value the client or
server doesn't understand should be treated the same as if this
property is omitted.
individual: a single person
group: a collection of people invited as a whole
location: a physical location that needs to be scheduled, e.g., a
conference room
resource: a non-human resource other than a location, such as a
projector
roles: String[Boolean] (optional)
This is a set of roles that this participant fulfills. If this
property is set, then the calendarAddress property MUST be set.
At least one role MUST be specified for the participant. The keys
in the set MUST be one of the following values, another value
registered in the IANA "JSCalendar Enum Values" registry, or a
vendor-specific value (see Section 3.3):
owner: The participant is an owner of the object. This signifies
they have permission to make changes to it that affect the
other participants. Nonowner participants may only change
properties that affect only themselves (for example, setting
their own alerts or changing their RSVP status).
attendee: The participant is expected to be present at the event.
optional: The participant's involvement with the event is
optional. This is expected to be primarily combined with the
"attendee" role.
informational: The participant is copied for informational
reasons and is not expected to attend.
chair: The participant is in charge of the event/task when it
occurs.
required: The participant is required to be present at the event.
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The value for each key in the map MUST be true. It is expected
that no more than one of the roles "required", "optional",
"informational" and "chair" be present; if more than one are
given, they take precendence as follows: "required" over "chair",
either of them over "optional", all of them over "informational".
Roles that are unknown to the implementation MUST be preserved.
participationStatus: String (optional, default: needs-action )
This is the participation status, if any, of this participant. If
this property is set, then the calendarAddress property MUST be
set.
The value MUST be one of the following values, another value
registered in the IANA "JSCalendar Enum Values" registry, or a
vendor-specific value (see Section 3.3):
needs-action: No status has yet been set by the participant.
accepted: The invited participant will participate.
declined: The invited participant will not participate.
tentative: The invited participant may participate.
delegated: The invited participant has delegated their attendance
to another participant, as specified in the delegatedTo
property.
expectReply: Boolean (optional, default: false)
If true, the organizer is expecting the participant to notify them
of their participation status. If this property is set, then the
calendarAddress property MUST be set.
sentBy: String (optional)
This is the email address in the "From" header of the email that
last updated this participant via iMIP. If this property is set,
then the calendarAddress property MUST be set. This SHOULD only
be set if the email address is different to that in the mailto URI
of this participant's calendarAddress property (i.e., the response
was received from a different address to that which the invitation
was sent to). If set, the value MUST be a valid addr-spec value
as defined in Section 3.4.1 of [RFC5322] .
delegatedTo: String[Boolean] (optional)
This is the set of participants that this participant has
delegated their participation to. If this property is set, then
the calendarAddress property MUST be set. Each key in the set
MUST be a URI according to the definition of the calendarAddress
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property. The value for each key in the map MUST be true. If
there are no delegates, this MUST be omitted (rather than
specified as an empty set).
delegatedFrom: String[Boolean] (optional)
This is a set of participants that this participant is acting as a
delegate for. If this property is set, then the calendarAddress
property MUST be set. Each key in the set MUST be a URI according
to the definition of the calendarAddress property. The value for
each key in the map MUST be true. If there are no delegators,
this MUST be omitted (rather than specified as an empty set).
memberOf: Id[Boolean] (optional)
This is a set of group participants that were invited to this
calendar object, which caused this participant to be invited due
to their membership in the group(s). If this property is set,
then the calendarAddress property MUST be set. Each key in the
set MUST be a URI according to the definition of the
calendarAddress property. The value for each key in the map MUST
be true. If there are no groups, this MUST be omitted (rather
than specified as an empty set).
links: Id[Link] (optional)
This is a map of link ids to Link objects, representing external
resources associated with this participant, for example, a vCard
or image. If there are no links, this MUST be omitted (rather
than specified as an empty set).
progress: String (optional; only allowed for participants of a
Task)
This represents the progress of the participant for this task. If
this property is set, then the calendarAddress property MUST be
set. It MUST NOT be set if the participationStatus of this
participant is any value other than accepted. See Section 5.2.5
for allowed values and semantics.
percentComplete: UnsignedInt (optional; only allowed for
participants of a Task)
This represents the percent completion of the participant for this
task. The property value MUST be a positive integer between 0 and
100.
4.5. Alerts Properties
4.5.1. alerts
Type: Id[Alert] (optional)
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This is a map of alert ids to Alert objects, representing alerts/
reminders to display or send to the user for this calendar object.
An Alert object has the following properties:
@type: String (mandatory)
This specifies the type of this object. This MUST be Alert, if
set.
trigger: OffsetTrigger|AbsoluteTrigger|UnknownTrigger (mandatory,
defaultType: OffsetTrigger)
This defines when to trigger the alert. New types may be defined
in future documents.
An OffsetTrigger object has the following properties:
@type: String (mandatory)
This specifies the type of this object. This MUST be
OffsetTrigger, if set.
offset: SignedDuration (mandatory)
This defines the offset at which to trigger the alert relative
to the time property defined in the relativeTo property of the
alert. Negative durations signify alerts before the time
property; positive durations signify alerts after the time
property.
relativeTo: String (optional, default: start )
This specifies the time property that the alert offset is
relative to. The value MUST be one of the following:
start: triggers the alert relative to the start of the
calendar object
end: triggers the alert relative to the end/due time of the
calendar object
An AbsoluteTrigger object has the following properties:
@type: String (mandatory)
This specifies the type of this object. This MUST be
AbsoluteTrigger.
when: UTCDateTime (mandatory)
This defines a specific UTC date-time when the alert is
triggered.
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An UnknownTrigger object is an object that contains an @type
property whose value is not recognized (i.e., not OffsetTrigger or
AbsoluteTrigger ) plus zero or more other properties. This is for
compatibility with client extensions and future specifications.
Implementations SHOULD NOT trigger for trigger types they do not
understand but MUST preserve them.
acknowledged: UTCDateTime (optional)
This records when an alert was last acknowledged. This is set
when the user has dismissed the alert; other clients that sync
this property SHOULD automatically dismiss or suppress duplicate
alerts (alerts with the same alert id that triggered on or before
this date-time).
For a recurring calendar object, setting the acknowledged property
MUST NOT add a new override to the recurrenceOverrides property.
If the alert is not already overridden, the acknowledged property
MUST be set on the alert in the base event/task.
Certain kinds of alert action may not provide feedback as to when
the user sees them, for example, email-based alerts. For those
kinds of alerts, this property MUST be set immediately when the
alert is triggered and the action is successfully carried out.
relatedTo: String[Relation] (optional)
This relates this alert to other alerts in the same JSCalendar
object. In addition to the relation values defined in
Section 1.4.10, the following key is allowed:
snooze: The linked alert is snoozed by this alert.
If the user wishes to snooze an alert, the application MUST create
an alert to trigger after snoozing. This new snooze alert MUST
set a "snooze" relation to the identifier of the original alert.
action: String (optional, default: display )
This describes how to alert the user.
The value MUST be at most one of the following values, a value
registered in the IANA "JSCalendar Enum Values" registry, or a
vendor-specific value (see Section 3.3):
display: The alert should be displayed as appropriate for the
current device and user context.
email: The alert should trigger an email sent out to the user,
notifying them of the alert. This action is typically only
appropriate for server implementations.
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4.6. Multilingual Properties
4.6.1. localizations
Type: String[PatchObject] (optional)
A map where each key is a language tag [RFC5646], and the
corresponding value is a set of patches to apply to the calendar
object in order to localize it into that locale.
See the description of PatchObject (Section 1.4.9) for the structure
of the PatchObject. The patches are applied to the top-level
calendar object. In addition, the locale property of the patched
object is set to the language tag. All pointers for patches MUST end
with one of the following suffixes; any patch that does not follow
this MUST be ignored unless otherwise specified in a future RFC:
* title
* description
* name
A patch MUST NOT have the prefix recurrenceOverrides ; any
localization of the override MUST be a patch to the localizations
property inside the override instead. For example, a patch to
locations/abcd1234/title is permissible, but a patch to uid or
recurrenceOverrides/2020-01-05T14:00:00/title is not.
Note that this specification does not define how to maintain validity
of localized content. For example, a client application changing a
JSCalendar object's title property might also need to update any
localizations of this property. Client implementations SHOULD
provide the means to manage localizations, but how to achieve this is
specific to the application's workflow and requirements.
4.7. Time Zone Properties
4.7.1. timeZone
Type: TimeZoneId|null (optional, default: null)
This identifies the time zone the object is scheduled in or is null
for floating time. If omitted, this MUST be presumed to be null
(i.e., floating time).
5. Type-Specific JSCalendar Properties
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5.1. Event Properties
In addition to the common JSCalendar object properties (Section 4),
an Event has the following properties:
5.1.1. start
Type: LocalDateTime (mandatory)
This is the date/time the event starts in the event's time zone (as
specified in the timeZone property, see Section 4.7.1).
5.1.2. duration
Type: Duration (optional, default: PT0S)
This is the zero or positive duration of the event in the event's
start time zone. The end time of an event can be found by adding the
duration to the event's start time.
5.1.3. endTimeZone
Type: TimeZoneId (optional)
This identifies the time zone in which this event ends, for cases
where the start and time zones of the event differ (e.g., a
transcontinental flight). If this property is not set, then the
event starts and ends in the same time zone. This property MUST NOT
be set if the timeZone property value is null or not set.
5.1.4. status
Type: String (optional, default: confirmed)
This is the scheduling status ( Section 4.4) of an Event. If set, it
MUST be one of the following values, another value registered in the
IANA "JSCalendar Enum Values" registry, or a vendor-specific value
(see Section 3.3):
confirmed: indicates the event is definitely happening
cancelled: indicates the event has been cancelled
tentative: indicates the event may happen
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5.2. Task Properties
In addition to the common JSCalendar object properties (Section 4), a
Task has the following properties:
5.2.1. due
Type: LocalDateTime (optional)
This is the date/time the task is due in the task's time zone. If
the timeZone property is set, then at least one of the due and start
properties MUST be set
5.2.2. start
Type: LocalDateTime (optional)
This the date/time the task should start in the task's time zone. If
the timeZone property is set, then at least one of the due and start
properties MUST be set
5.2.3. estimatedDuration
Type: Duration (optional)
This specifies the estimated positive duration of time the task takes
to complete.
5.2.4. percentComplete
Type: UnsignedInt (optional)
This represents the percent completion of the task overall. The
property value MUST be a positive integer between 0 and 100.
5.2.5. progress
Type: String (optional)
This defines the progress of this task. If omitted, the default
progress ( Section 4.4) of a Task is defined as follows (in order of
evaluation):
completed: if the progress property value of all participants is
completed
failed: if at least one progress property value of a participant is
failed
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in-process: if at least one progress property value of a participant
is in-process
needs-action: if none of the other criteria match
If set, it MUST be one of the following values, another value
registered in the IANA "JSCalendar Enum Values" registry, or a
vendor-specific value (see Section 3.3):
needs-action: indicates the task needs action
in-process: indicates the task is in process
completed: indicates the task is completed
failed: indicates the task failed
cancelled: indicates the task was cancelled
5.3. Group Properties
Group supports the following common JSCalendar properties (Section 4)
:
* @type
* uid
* prodId
* created
* updated
* title
* description
* descriptionContentType
* links
* locale
* keywords
* categories
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* color
In addition, the following Group-specific properties are supported:
5.3.1. entries
Type: (Task|Event)[] (mandatory)
This is a collection of group members. Implementations MUST ignore
entries of unknown type.
5.3.2. source
Type: String (optional)
This is the source from which updated versions of this group may be
retrieved. The value MUST be a URI.
6. Examples
The following examples illustrate several aspects of the JSCalendar
data model and format. The examples may omit mandatory or additional
properties, which is indicated by a placeholder property with key
.... While most of the examples use calendar event objects, they are
also illustrative for tasks.
6.1. Simple Event
This example illustrates a simple one-time event. It specifies a
one-time event that begins on January 15, 2020 at 1 pm New York local
time and ends after 1 hour.
{
"@type": "Event",
"uid": "a8df6573-0474-496d-8496-033ad45d7fea",
"updated": "2020-01-02T18:23:04Z",
"title": "Some event",
"start": "2020-01-15T13:00:00",
"timeZone": "America/New_York",
"duration": "PT1H"
}
6.2. Simple Task
This example illustrates a simple task for a plain to-do item.
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{
"@type": "Task",
"uid": "2a358cee-6489-4f14-a57f-c104db4dc2f2",
"updated": "2020-01-09T14:32:01Z",
"title": "Do something"
}
6.3. Simple Group
This example illustrates a simple calendar object group that contains
an event and a task.
{
"@type": "Group",
"uid": "bf0ac22b-4989-4caf-9ebd-54301b4ee51a",
"updated": "2020-01-15T18:00:00Z",
"title": "A simple group",
"entries": [{
"@type": "Event",
"uid": "a8df6573-0474-496d-8496-033ad45d7fea",
"updated": "2020-01-02T18:23:04Z",
"title": "Some event",
"start": "2020-01-15T13:00:00",
"timeZone": "America/New_York",
"duration": "PT1H"
},
{
"@type": "Task",
"uid": "2a358cee-6489-4f14-a57f-c104db4dc2f2",
"updated": "2020-01-09T14:32:01Z",
"title": "Do something"
}]
}
6.4. All-Day Event
This example illustrates an event for an international holiday. It
specifies an all-day event on April 1 that occurs every year since
the year 1900.
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{
"...": "",
"title": "April Fool's Day",
"showWithoutTime": true,
"start": "1900-04-01T00:00:00",
"duration": "P1D",
"recurrenceRule": {
"frequency": "yearly"
}
}
6.5. Task with a Due Date
This example illustrates a task with a due date. It is a reminder to
buy groceries before 6 pm Vienna local time on January 19, 2020. The
calendar user expects to need 1 hour for shopping.
{
"...": "",
"title": "Buy groceries",
"due": "2020-01-19T18:00:00",
"timeZone": "Europe/Vienna",
"estimatedDuration": "PT1H"
}
6.6. Event with End Time Zone
This example illustrates the use of end time zones by use of an
international flight. The flight starts on April 1, 2020 at 9 am in
Berlin local time. The duration of the flight is scheduled at 10
hours 30 minutes. The time at the flight's destination is in the
same time zone as Tokyo. Calendar clients could use the end time
zone to display the arrival time in Tokyo local time and highlight
the time zone difference of the flight. The location names can serve
as input for navigation systems. The mainLocationId property
indicates the start location.
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{
"...": "",
"title": "Flight XY51 to Tokyo",
"start": "2020-04-01T09:00:00",
"timeZone": "Europe/Berlin",
"endTimeZone": "Asia/Tokyo",
"duration": "PT10H30M",
"mainLocationId": "1",
"locations": {
"1": {
"name": "Frankfurt Airport (FRA)"
},
"2": {
"name": "Narita International Airport (NRT)"
}
}
}
6.7. Floating-Time Event (with Recurrence)
This example illustrates the use of floating time. Since January 1,
2020, a calendar user blocks 30 minutes every day to practice yoga at
7 am local time in whatever time zone the user is located on that
date.
{
"...": "",
"title": "Yoga",
"start": "2020-01-01T07:00:00",
"duration": "PT30M",
"recurrenceRule": {
"frequency": "daily"
}
}
6.8. Event with Multiple Locations and Localization
This example illustrates an event that happens at both a physical and
a virtual location. Fans can see a live concert on premises or
online. The event title and descriptions are localized.
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{
"...": "",
"title": "Live from Music Bowl: The Band",
"description": "Go see the biggest music event ever!",
"locale": "en",
"start": "2020-07-04T17:00:00",
"timeZone": "America/New_York",
"duration": "PT3H",
"locations": {
"c0503d30-8c50-4372-87b5-7657e8e0fedd": {
"name": "The Music Bowl",
"description": "Music Bowl, Central Park, New York",
"coordinates": "geo:40.7829,-73.9654"
}
},
"virtualLocations": {
"vloc1": {
"name": "Free live Stream from Music Bowl",
"uri": "https://stream.example.com/the_band_2020"
}
},
"localizations": {
"de": {
"title": "Live von der Music Bowl: The Band!",
"description": "Schau dir das größte Musikereignis an!",
"virtualLocations/vloc1/name":
"Gratis Live-Stream aus der Music Bowl"
}
}
}
6.9. Recurring Event with Overrides
This example illustrates the use of recurrence overrides. A math
course at a university is held for the first time on January 8, 2020
at 9 am London time and occurs every week until June 24, 2020. Each
lecture lasts for one hour and 30 minutes and is located at the
Mathematics department. This event has exceptional occurrences: at
the last occurrence of the course is an exam, which lasts for 2 hours
and starts at 10 am. Also, the location of the exam differs from the
usual location. On April 1, no course is held. On January 7 at 2
pm, there is an optional introduction course, which occurs before the
first regular lecture.
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{
"...": "",
"title": "Calculus I",
"start": "2020-01-08T09:00:00",
"timeZone": "Europe/London",
"duration": "PT1H30M",
"locations": {
"mlab": {
"title": "Math lab room 1",
"description": "Math Lab I, Department of Mathematics"
}
},
"recurrenceRule": {
"frequency": "weekly",
"until": "2020-06-24T09:00:00"
},
"recurrenceOverrides": {
"2020-01-07T14:00:00": {
"title": "Introduction to Calculus I (optional)"
},
"2020-04-01T09:00:00": {
"excluded": true
},
"2020-06-25T09:00:00": {
"title": "Calculus I Exam",
"start": "2020-06-25T10:00:00",
"duration": "PT2H",
"locations": {
"auditorium": {
"title": "Big Auditorium",
"description": "Big Auditorium, Other Road"
}
}
}
}
}
6.10. Recurring Event with Participants
This example illustrates scheduled events. A team meeting occurs
every week since January 8, 2020 at 9 am Johannesburg time. The
event owner also chairs the event. Participants meet in a virtual
meeting room. An attendee has accepted the invitation, but, on March
4, 2020, he is unavailable and declined participation for this
occurrence.
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{
"...": "",
"title": "FooBar team meeting",
"start": "2020-01-08T09:00:00",
"timeZone": "Africa/Johannesburg",
"duration": "PT1H",
"virtualLocations": {
"0": {
"name": "ChatMe meeting room",
"uri": "https://chatme.example.com?id=1234567&pw=a8a24627b63d"
}
},
"recurrenceRule": {
"frequency": "weekly"
},
"organizerCalendarAddress":
"mailto:f245f875-7f63-4a5e-a2c8@schedule.example.com",
"participants": {
"dG9tQGZvb2Jhci5xlLmNvbQ": {
"name": "Tom Tool",
"email": "tom@foobar.example.com",
"calendarAddress": "mailto:tom@calendar.example.com",
"participationStatus": "accepted",
"roles": {
"attendee": true
}
},
"em9lQGZvb2GFtcGxlLmNvbQ": {
"name": "Zoe Zelda",
"calendarAddress": mailto:zoe@foobar.example.com",
"participationStatus": "accepted",
"roles": {
"owner": true,
"attendee": true,
"chair": true
}
}
},
"recurrenceOverrides": {
"2020-03-04T09:00:00": {
"participants/dG9tQGZvb2Jhci5xlLmNvbQ/participationStatus":
"declined"
}
}
}
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7. Security Considerations
Calendaring and scheduling information is very privacy sensitive. It
can reveal the social network of a user, location information of this
user and those in their social network, identity and credentials
information, and patterns of behavior of the user in both the
physical and cyber realm. Additionally, calendar events and tasks
can influence the physical location of a user or their cyber behavior
within a known time window. Its transmission and storage must be
done carefully to protect it from possible threats, such as
eavesdropping, replay, message insertion, deletion, modification, and
on-path attacks.
The data being stored and transmitted may be used in systems with
real-world consequences. For example, a home automation system may
turn an alarm on and off or a coworking space may charge money to the
organizer of an event that books one of their meeting rooms. Such
systems must be careful to authenticate all data they receive to
prevent them from being subverted and ensure the change comes from an
authorized entity.
This document only defines the data format; such considerations are
primarily the concern of the API or method of storage and
transmission of such files.
7.1. Expanding Recurrences
A recurrence rule may produce infinite occurrences of an event.
Implementations MUST handle expansions carefully to prevent
accidental or deliberate resource exhaustion.
Conversely, a recurrence rule may be specified that does not expand
to anything. It is not always possible to tell this through static
analysis of the rule, so implementations MUST be careful to avoid
getting stuck in infinite loops or otherwise exhausting resources
while searching for the next occurrence.
Events recur in the event's time zone. If the user is in a different
time zone, daylight saving transitions may cause an event that
normally occurs at, for example, 9 am to suddenly shift an hour
earlier. This may be used in an attempt to cause a participant to
miss an important meeting. User agents must be careful to translate
date-times correctly between time zones and may wish to call out
unexpected changes in the time of a recurring event.
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7.2. JSON Parsing
The security considerations of [RFC8259] apply to the use of JSON as
the data interchange format.
As for any serialization format, parsers need to thoroughly check the
syntax of the supplied data. JSON uses opening and closing tags for
several types and structures, and it is possible that the end of the
supplied data will be reached when scanning for a matching closing
tag; this is an error condition, and implementations need to stop
scanning at the end of the supplied data.
JSON also uses a string encoding with some escape sequences to encode
special characters within a string. Care is needed when processing
these escape sequences to ensure that they are fully formed before
the special processing is triggered, with special care taken when the
escape sequences appear adjacent to other (non-escaped) special
characters or adjacent to the end of data (as in the previous
paragraph).
If parsing JSON into a non-textual structured data format,
implementations may need to allocate storage to hold JSON string
elements. Since JSON does not use explicit string lengths, the risk
of denial of service due to resource exhaustion is small, but
implementations may still wish to place limits on the size of
allocations they are willing to make in any given context, to avoid
untrusted data causing excessive memory allocation.
7.3. URI Values
Several JSCalendar properties contain URIs as values, and processing
these properties requires extra care. Section 7 of [RFC3986]
discusses security risks related to URIs.
Fetching remote resources carries inherent risks. Connections must
only be allowed on well-known ports, using allowed protocols
(generally, just HTTP/HTTPS on their default ports). The URL must be
resolved externally and not allowed to access internal resources.
Connecting to an external source reveals IP (and therefore often
location) information.
A maliciously constructed JSCalendar object may contain a very large
number of URIs. In the case of published calendars with a large
number of subscribers, such objects could be widely distributed.
Implementations should be careful to limit the automatic fetching of
linked resources to reduce the risk of this being an amplification
vector for a denial-of-service attack.
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7.4. Spam
Calendar systems may receive JSCalendar files from untrusted sources,
in particular, as attachments to emails. This can be a vector for an
attacker to inject spam into a user's calendar. This may confuse,
annoy, and mislead users or overwhelm their calendar with bogus
events, preventing them from seeing legitimate ones.
Heuristic, statistical, or machine-learning-based filters can be
effective in filtering out spam. Authentication mechanisms, such as
DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) [RFC6376], can help establish the
source of messages and associate the data with existing relationships
(such as an address book contact). However, misclassifications are
always possible and providing a mechanism for users to quickly
correct this is advised.
Confusable unicode characters may be used to trick a user into
trusting a JSCalendar file that appears to come from a known contact
but is actually from a similar-looking source controlled by an
attacker.
7.5. Duplication
It is important for calendar systems to maintain the UID of an event
when updating it to avoid an unexpected duplication of events.
Consumers of the data may not remove the previous version of the
event if it has a different UID. This can lead to a confusing
situation for the user, with many variations of the event and no
indication of which one is correct. Care must be taken by consumers
of the data to remove old events where possible to avoid an
accidental denial-of-service attack due to the volume of data.
7.6. Time Zones
Events recur in a particular time zone. When this differs from the
user's current time zone, it may unexpectedly cause an occurrence to
shift in time for that user due to a daylight savings change in the
event's time zone. A maliciously crafted event could attempt to
confuse users with such an event to ensure a meeting is missed.
8. IANA Considerations
TBD
9. References
9.1. Normative References
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[CLDR] "Unicode Common Locale Data Repository",
.
[COLORS] Çelik, T., Lilley, C., and L. Baron, "CSS Color Module
Level 3", W3C Recommendation, June 2018,
.
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119,
DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997,
.
[RFC2397] Masinter, L., "The "data" URL scheme", RFC 2397,
DOI 10.17487/RFC2397, August 1998,
.
[RFC2445] Dawson, F. and D. Stenerson, "Internet Calendaring and
Scheduling Core Object Specification (iCalendar)",
RFC 2445, DOI 10.17487/RFC2445, November 1998,
.
[RFC3339] Klyne, G. and C. Newman, "Date and Time on the Internet:
Timestamps", RFC 3339, DOI 10.17487/RFC3339, July 2002,
.
[RFC3986] Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R., and L. Masinter, "Uniform
Resource Identifier (URI): Generic Syntax", STD 66,
RFC 3986, DOI 10.17487/RFC3986, January 2005,
.
[RFC4122] Leach, P., Mealling, M., and R. Salz, "A Universally
Unique IDentifier (UUID) URN Namespace", RFC 4122,
DOI 10.17487/RFC4122, July 2005,
.
[RFC4589] Schulzrinne, H. and H. Tschofenig, "Location Types
Registry", RFC 4589, DOI 10.17487/RFC4589, July 2006,
.
[RFC4648] Josefsson, S., "The Base16, Base32, and Base64 Data
Encodings", RFC 4648, DOI 10.17487/RFC4648, October 2006,
.
[RFC5234] Crocker, D., Ed. and P. Overell, "Augmented BNF for Syntax
Specifications: ABNF", STD 68, RFC 5234,
DOI 10.17487/RFC5234, January 2008,
.
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[RFC5322] Resnick, P., Ed., "Internet Message Format", RFC 5322,
DOI 10.17487/RFC5322, October 2008,
.
[RFC5545] Desruisseaux, B., Ed., "Internet Calendaring and
Scheduling Core Object Specification (iCalendar)",
RFC 5545, DOI 10.17487/RFC5545, September 2009,
.
[RFC5546] Daboo, C., Ed., "iCalendar Transport-Independent
Interoperability Protocol (iTIP)", RFC 5546,
DOI 10.17487/RFC5546, December 2009,
.
[RFC5646] Phillips, A., Ed. and M. Davis, Ed., "Tags for Identifying
Languages", BCP 47, RFC 5646, DOI 10.17487/RFC5646,
September 2009, .
[RFC5870] Mayrhofer, A. and C. Spanring, "A Uniform Resource
Identifier for Geographic Locations ('geo' URI)",
RFC 5870, DOI 10.17487/RFC5870, June 2010,
.
[RFC6638] Daboo, C. and B. Desruisseaux, "Scheduling Extensions to
CalDAV", RFC 6638, DOI 10.17487/RFC6638, June 2012,
.
[RFC6838] Freed, N., Klensin, J., and T. Hansen, "Media Type
Specifications and Registration Procedures", BCP 13,
RFC 6838, DOI 10.17487/RFC6838, January 2013,
.
[RFC6901] Bryan, P., Ed., Zyp, K., and M. Nottingham, Ed.,
"JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) Pointer", RFC 6901,
DOI 10.17487/RFC6901, April 2013,
.
[RFC7493] Bray, T., Ed., "The I-JSON Message Format", RFC 7493,
DOI 10.17487/RFC7493, March 2015,
.
[RFC7529] Daboo, C. and G. Yakushev, "Non-Gregorian Recurrence Rules
in the Internet Calendaring and Scheduling Core Object
Specification (iCalendar)", RFC 7529,
DOI 10.17487/RFC7529, May 2015,
.
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[RFC7809] Daboo, C., "Calendaring Extensions to WebDAV (CalDAV):
Time Zones by Reference", RFC 7809, DOI 10.17487/RFC7809,
March 2016, .
[RFC8174] Leiba, B., "Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in RFC
2119 Key Words", BCP 14, RFC 8174, DOI 10.17487/RFC8174,
May 2017, .
[RFC8259] Bray, T., Ed., "The JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) Data
Interchange Format", STD 90, RFC 8259,
DOI 10.17487/RFC8259, December 2017,
.
[RFC8288] Nottingham, M., "Web Linking", RFC 8288,
DOI 10.17487/RFC8288, October 2017,
.
[RFC8607] Daboo, C., Quillaud, A., and K. Murchison, Ed.,
"Calendaring Extensions to WebDAV (CalDAV): Managed
Attachments", RFC 8607, DOI 10.17487/RFC8607, June 2019,
.
[RFC8984] Jenkins, N. and R. Stepanek, "JSCalendar: A JSON
Representation of Calendar Data", RFC 8984,
DOI 10.17487/RFC8984, July 2021,
.
[RFC9073] Douglass, M., "Event Publishing Extensions to iCalendar",
RFC 9073, DOI 10.17487/RFC9073, August 2021,
.
[RFC9074] Daboo, C. and K. Murchison, Ed., ""VALARM" Extensions for
iCalendar", RFC 9074, DOI 10.17487/RFC9074, August 2021,
.
[RFC9253] Douglass, M., "Support for iCalendar Relationships",
RFC 9253, DOI 10.17487/RFC9253, August 2022,
.
[TZDB] IANA, "Time Zone Database",
.
9.2. Informative References
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[I-D.ietf-calext-ical-tasks]
Douglass, M. and A. Apthorp, "Task Extensions to
iCalendar", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-ietf-
calext-ical-tasks, 30 July 2024,
.
[I-D.ietf-jmap-calendars]
Jenkins, N.M. and M. Douglass, "JMAP for Calendars", Work
in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-ietf-jmap-calendars, 22
July 2024, .
[ISO.9070.1991]
ISO/IEC, "Information technology -- SGML support
facilities -- Registration procedures for public text
owner identifiers", Edition 2, ISO/IEC 9070:1991, April
1991, .
[LOCATIONTYPES]
IANA, "Location Types Registry",
.
[MEDIATYPES]
IANA, "Media Types",
.
[RFC6376] Crocker, D., Ed., Hansen, T., Ed., and M. Kucherawy, Ed.,
"DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) Signatures", STD 76,
RFC 6376, DOI 10.17487/RFC6376, September 2011,
.
[RFC7265] Kewisch, P., Daboo, C., and M. Douglass, "jCal: The JSON
Format for iCalendar", RFC 7265, DOI 10.17487/RFC7265, May
2014, .
[RFC7986] Daboo, C., "New Properties for iCalendar", RFC 7986,
DOI 10.17487/RFC7986, October 2016,
.
Appendix A. Differences from RFC 8984
This section documents all significant differences from RFC 8984.
Insignificant differences, such as formatting, grammar or typos are
not documented.
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A.1. Applied Errata
All verified errata of RFC 8984 was applied to this document:
* Errata 6872 (https://www.rfc-editor.org/errata/eid6872)
* Errata 6873 (https://www.rfc-editor.org/errata/eid6873)
* Errata 8028 (https://www.rfc-editor.org/errata/eid8028)
A.2. Obsolete Properties
The following properties became obsolete:
*excludedRecurrenceRules*:
This is incompatible with iCalendar, which deprecated the EXRULE
property [RFC2445] (Section 4.8.5.2) in [RFC5545].
See Section 4.3.4 of [RFC8984].
*recurrenceRules*:
This is incompatible with the following definitions of the
iCalendar RRULE property [RFC5545] (Section 3.8.5.3):
* The RRULE property SHOULD NOT be specified more than once.
* The recurrence set generated with multiple RRULE properties is
undefined.
The newly defined single-valued recurrenceRule property
(Section 4.3.3) replaces it.
See Section 4.3.3 of [RFC8984].
*timeZones*:
This property was obsoleted for the following reasons:
* Custom time zones in calendaring data increase implementation
complexity, introduce inefficiencies and are error-prone, as
described for CalDAV and iCalendar in [RFC7809].
* In practice, the only non-IANA time zone identifiers are
Microsoft time zone names. These can be converted to IANA time
zones, e.g. using the International Components for Unicode
(https://icu.unicode.org/) software library.
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* The property contradicts the stated goal of JSCalendar to avoid
ambiguities and pitfalls of iCalendar, defined in Section 1.1
of [RFC8984].
See Section 4.7.2 of [RFC8984].
*Link.cid*:
This property was obsoleted for the following reasons:
* It only is relevant for rich-text descriptions, but the related
iCalendar STYLED-DESCRIPTION property [RFC9073] (Section 6.5)
does not support referring to attached media.
* It only is applicable for Link objects having a "data:" URI as
href property value. But even the definition of the Link
object recommends not to use "data:" URIs as values in the href
property.
* A Link with "data:" URI converts to an iCalendar BINARY value
[RFC5545] (Section 3.3.1). But these are marginally supported
by CalDAV clients, which tend to prefer using WebDAV managed
attachments [RFC8607].
See Section 1.4.11 of [RFC8984].
*Location.{relativeTo|timeZone}*:
These got replaced with the newly defined Event.endTimeZone
property (Section 5.1.3):
* They were meant to be equivalent to the iCalendar DTEND
property [RFC5545] (Section 3.8.2.2). But the semantics were
undefined if multiple Location objects had "relativeTo=end" and
the "timeZone" property set.
* Their semantics were undefined for Task objects.
* They were incompatible with the iCalendar VLOCATION component
[RFC9073] (Section 7.2), which neither defines how to set a
time zone identifier or how the VLOCATION relates to start and
end.
See Section 4.2.5 of [RFC8984].
*Participant.locationId*:
This is incompatible with the iCalendar PARTICIPANT component
[RFC9073] (Section 7.1):
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* The PARTICIPANT component may contain multiple VLOCATION
components and LOCATION properties.
* The PARTICIPANT component does not support referring to other
VLOCATION components or LOCATION properties
The description of the Event object type in Section 2.1 reflects
this:
* It stated: "Multiple participants may partake in the event at
multiple locations."
* It now states: "Multiple participants may partake in the
event."
See Section 4.4.6 of [RFC8984].
*Participant.language*:
No equivalent element exists in iCalendar and its current single-
valued definition is likely to conflict with any related future
extension of the PARTICIPANT component [RFC9073] (Section 7.1).
See Section 4.4.6 of [RFC8984].
*{Participant|Task}.progressUpdated*:
This became obsolete for the following reasons:
* It is incompatible with the newly introduced iCalendar VSTATUS
component [I-D.ietf-calext-ical-tasks] (Section 12.1), which
may occur multiple times in the PARTICIPANT and VTODO
components.
* The VSTATUS component introduces new semantics to a task's
progress and status, which better be defined by a future
JSCalendar extension for tasks.
See Section 4.4.6 of [RFC8984] and Section 5.2.6 of [RFC8984].
A.3. Reserved Properties
A.3.1. JMAP for Calendars
The following common use properties became reserved for JMAP for
Calendars [I-D.ietf-jmap-calendars]:
*useDefaultAlerts*:
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No equivalent element exists in iCalendar and no consensus for
default alarms in CalDAV and iCalendar was found at IETF as part
of [RFC9074].
See Section 4.4.1 of [RFC8984].
*Participant.scheduleSequence*:
This requires further work by IETF to update iTIP [RFC5546] with
the PARTICIPANT component and JSCalendar. This property may later
be redefined for common use.
See Section 4.4.6 of [RFC8984].
*Participant.scheduleUpdated*:
This requires further work by IETF to update iTIP [RFC5546] with
the PARTICIPANT component and JSCalendar. This property may later
be redefined for common use.
See Section 4.4.6 of [RFC8984].
A.3.2. Scheduling Extensions for CalDAV and iTIP
The following common use properties became reserved for future
JSCalendar extensions of Scheduling Extensions for CalDAV [RFC6638]
and iTIP [RFC5546]:
*replyTo*:
This requires further work by IETF. For compatibility with
iCalendar, the newly introduced organizerCalendarAddress property
(Section 4.4.4) replaces it.
See Section 4.4.4 of [RFC8984].
*requestStatus*:
This mainly is applicable in scheduling over CalDAV.
See Section 4.4.7 of [RFC8984].
*sentBy*:
No equivalent element exists in iCalendar and this property mainly
is relevant in context of a combined calendaring and mail service.
Note that the Participant.sentBy property does _not_ become
reserved: it is equivalent to the iCalendar SENT-BY [RFC5545]
(Section 3.2.18) parameter.
See Section 4.4.5 of [RFC8984].
*Participant.invitedBy*:
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This requires further work by IETF. Specifically, the iTIP
definitions of the REPLY method [RFC5546] (Section 3.2.3) and how
to forward invitation requests (Section 4.2.8 of [RFC5546]) must
be updated.
See Section 4.4.6 of [RFC8984].
*Participant.participationComment*:
This requires further work by IETF to update iTIP [RFC5546] with
the PARTICIPANT component or JSCalendar. This property may later
be redefined for common use.
See Section 4.4.6 of [RFC8984].
*Participant.scheduleAgent*:
This only is applicable in scheduling over CalDAV.
See Section 4.4.6 of [RFC8984].
*Participant.scheduleForceSend*:
This only is applicable in scheduling over CalDAV.
See Section 4.4.6 of [RFC8984].
*Participant.scheduleStatus*:
This only is applicable in scheduling over CalDAV.
See Section 4.4.6 of [RFC8984].
*Participant.sendTo*:
This requires further work by IETF. For compatibility with
iCalendar, the newly introduced Participant.calendarAddress
property (Section 4.4.5) replaces it.
See Section 4.4.6 of [RFC8984].
A.3.3. Reserved for Internal Use
The following properties became reserved for internal use by
JSCalendar:
*excluded*:
This property name already was defined for internal use only in
the recurrenceOverrides property, but registering it for common
use had made it appear as being a regular property. Making this a
reserved property is to help clarify its purpose. Section 4.3.4
has been updated accordingly.
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See Section 4.3.4 of [RFC8984].
A.4. Updated Properties
The following property definitions were updated:
*@type*:
The original definition required this property be set on every
object type. The type and property notation in Section 1.3 now
matches the one in JSContact, and the @type property is optional
in the majority of cases.
*Alert.relatedTo*:
The original definition instructed to set the "parent" relation on
a snooze alert. It now instructs to set the newly defined
"snooze" relation, for compatibility with the VALARM "SNOOZE"
relationship type (Section 7 of [RFC9074].
See Section 4.5.1.
*Alert.trigger*:
JSCalendar now supports default types for properties of type A|B.
The default type of this property now is OffsetTrigger.
See Section 4.5.1.
*Link.display*:
The original definition only allowed one purpose to be set, which
is incompatible with the multi-valued iCalendar DISPLAY parameter
[RFC7986] (Section 6.1). It now supports setting multiple
purposes.
See Section 1.4.11.
*Link.rel*:
The original definition restricted the value of this property to
registered link types. It now also allows extension relation
types for compatibility with the LINKREL parameter [RFC9253]
(Section 6.1).
See Section 1.4.11.
*Participant.delegatedFrom*, *Participant.delegatedTo*,
*Participant.memberOf*,
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The original definitions required their values to identify
Participant objects. This was incompatible with iCalendar when
the DELEGATED-TO, DELEGATED-FROM or MEMBER parameters contained a
calendar address but no ATTENDEE property with that same calendar
address. The new definition now requires the property values to
be calendar addresses.
Also, they now require the calendarAddress property to be set.
See Section 4.4.5.
*Participant.expectReply*, *Participant.invitedBy*,
*Participant.kind*, *Participant.participationStatus*,
*Participant.progress*, *Participant.sentBy*:
The original definitions were incompatible with iCalendar: they
did not require the (now reserved) sendTo property to be set, but
their equivalent iCalendar parameters require an ATTENDEE
property. They now require the calendarAddress property to be
set.
See Section 4.4.5.
*Participant.roles*:
The original definition was incompatible with iCalendar:
* It did not cover the "REQ-PARTICIPANT" value of the ROLE
parameter [RFC5545] (Section 3.2.16). It now defines the new
"required" role and the precendence of roles got redefined to
best reflect the single-valued ROLE parameter.
* It was mandatory for a Participant, but the (now reserved)
sendTo property was not. This was incompatible with iCalendar,
which required an ATTENDEE property to set the ROLE parameter.
It now is optional, but requires the calendarAddress property
to be set.
* It defined a "contact" role, but this role later got redefined
as an enumerated value of the PARTICIPANT-TYPE property
[RFC9073] (Section 6.2). It now removed this role and leaves
defining participant types to a future JSCalendar extension.
See Section 4.4.5.
*Relation.relation*:
The original definition specified the empty relation to represent
an unspecified relationship. It now defines the empty relation to
default to "parent", unless overridden, for compatibility with the
RELATED-TO property [RFC5545] (Section 3.8.4.5).
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See Section 1.4.10.
*Task.{due|start}*:
The original definition defined these as optional, but this is
incompatible with iCalendar: if the Task object's timeZone
property is set, then it requires the DUE property [RFC5545]
(Section 3.8.2.3) or DTSTART property [RFC5545] (Section 3.8.2.4)
be set in the VTODO component. It now requires at least one of
the "due" or "start" properties be set, if the "timeZone" property
is set.
See Section 5.2.
A.5. New Properties
The following new properties were defined:
*mainLocationId*:
This got introduced for better interoperatibility with iCalendar,
where the VEVENT and VTODO components allow at most one LOCATION
property to be present. While VLOCATION components [RFC9073]
(Section 7.2) may occur multiple times, implementations need to
know which Location to choose for the LOCATION property.
See Section 4.2.6.
*organizerCalendarAddress*:
This replaces the reserved replyTo property.
See Section 4.4.4.
*recurrenceRule*:
This replaces the obsoleted recurrenceRules property.
See Section 4.3.3.
*Event.endTimeZone*:
This replaces the obsoleted Location.relativeTo and
Location.timeZone properties.
See Section 5.1.3.
*Location.descriptionContentType*:
This is for compatibility with the iCalendar STYLED-DESCRIPTION
property [RFC9073] (Section 6.5) of the VLOCATION component.
See Section 4.2.5.
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*Participant.calendarAddress*:
This replaces the reserved Participant.sendTo property.
See Section 4.4.5.
*VirtualLocation.descriptionContentType*:
This is for consistency with the definition of the Location object
type. The newly defined VCONFERENCE component will be allowed to
contain the STYLED-DESCRIPTION property [RFC9073] (Section 6.5).
See Section 4.2.7.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank the members of CalConnect for their
valuable contributions. This specification originated from the work
of the API technical committee of CalConnect: The Calendaring and
Scheduling Consortium.
Authors' Addresses
Neil Jenkins
Fastmail
Collins St. West
P.O. Box 234
Melbourne VIC 8007
Australia
Email: neilj@fastmailteam.com
URI: https://www.fastmail.com
Robert Stepanek
Fastmail
Collins St. West
P.O. Box 234
Melbourne VIC 8007
Australia
Email: rsto@fastmailteam.com
URI: https://www.fastmail.com
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