Incorrect ics feeds due to daylight savings time

  • Using the current release of WordPress and Event Organizer … I have a recurring event that recurs monthly for a number of years.

    https://summerchasefl.com/feed/eo-events/

    When I look at the event through an ics feed, the time is SOMETIMES 1 hour off because during some months of the year, daylight savings time is in effect and during other times it’s NOT in effect. It is ALWAYS correct when I look at it directly through Event Organizer though.

    For example, if you look at the “Board Meeting (Monthly)” (4th Monday of the month) anytime between March 23, 2015 and October 26, 2015, it shows the time “from 10:00 AM – 12:45 PM” (which is NOT correct). However, if you look at it for November 2015 – February 2016, it shows the correct time of “9:00 AM – 11:45 AM”.

    I have looked at this feed using both Google Calendar and Outlook calendar and the results for both are as described in the paragraph above. In Event Organizer though it ALWAYS shows as “9:00 AM – 11:45 AM” which is correct.

    Here is an excerpt from the ics file:

    BEGIN:VEVENT
UID:[email protected]
STATUS:CONFIRMED
DTSTAMP:20150423T120929Z
CREATED:20150403T153811Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20150408T171150Z
DTSTART:20150126T140000Z
DTEND:20150126T164500Z
RRULE:FREQ=MONTHLY;INTERVAL=1;BYDAY=4MO;UNTIL=21151125T140000Z
SUMMARY: Board Meeting (Monthly)
X-ALT-DESC;FMTTYPE=text/html:
CATEGORIES:Meetings
ORGANIZER;CN="jeff9315":MAILTO:xxxxxxxx
URL;VALUE=URI:https://summerchasefl.com/events/event/board-meeting-monthly/
END:VEVENT

    Thanks … Jeff

    https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/event-organiser/

Viewing 11 replies - 1 through 11 (of 11 total)
  • Thread Starter jeff9315

    (@jeff9315)

    I guess this is a bug that can’t be fixed. Oh well.

    Hi jeff, did you find a fix for this? I have noticed the precise same issue.

    I will have a look through the code and ics documentation to see what is the best way to handle this.

    Thread Starter jeff9315

    (@jeff9315)

    Hi BlueC … No I haven’t found a fix and I thank you for reporting that I’m not crazy ?? Are you one of the developers?

    Here is some further info:
    * The time showing in Event Organizer is 9:00
    * The time showing on MOST calendars (Google Calendar, Android Sunrise Calendar, Android Calendar Notifier) is 10:00
    * The time showing on Android aCalendar+ is 9:00 … so aCalendar+ is using the same type of logic to read as Event Organizer is using to write.

    Thanks … Jeff

    Hi Jeff, no I’m not one of the developers but I know my way around PHP and WordPress so I’m going to have a look into it. I suspect that the extension is not Timezone aware. I’ll let you know what I find.

    Ok basically the ICS file generated has no timezone data and saves every time as UTC. This means it is up to the client application to interpret this, and it does not take account of any DST changes.

    From digging around the github repo it looks like the dev has attempted a few fixes for this as there are various branches that mention timezone. I’ll contact the dev.

    https://github.com/stephenharris/Event-Organiser

    Ahh in fact, the bug is already logged in the github issue tracker:

    https://github.com/stephenharris/Event-Organiser/issues/293

    Plugin Author Stephen Harris

    (@stephenharris)

    Hi Jeff / BlueC,

    My apologies for having not spotted this thread sooner. This is a known issue, and the good news is that you can remedy this yourself immediately.

    First copy your ical.php template into (the root directory of) your theme. This means any changes made will not be lost when you update the plug-in. Then replace the contents of that file with the patched version, which you can get here: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/stephenharris/Event-Organiser/59105f7e6ac115f8c9f3cc381428342efd2abe5e/templates/ical.php

    As noted in the thread the reason this patch has not yet been applied is that it could cause issues for users who have thus far not experienced any issues. The impact of the patch on existing users will need to be assessed and the pro/cons weighed up, but the good news is that you can simply over-ride the default iCal feed template with your own patched copy.

    I’ll post an update here if this patch is ever included in the core plug-in.

    Awesome response thanks Stephen. We crossed posts – I added a comment to the github issue tracker at the same time you posted here.

    I’m going to patch my install and see how I get along.

    Thread Starter jeff9315

    (@jeff9315)

    AWESOME!!! Thank you both Stephen and BlueC. I’ll test it out and if it works, should I mark this topic as resolved or should we wait until the patch is included in the core plugin?

    I have tested it (using local copy of updated ical.php in my theme) and it works well – seems to have fixed the issue.

    Google calendar is tricky to get to update as it will only refresh every 24 hours so a workaround is to add it as a new calander with a random parameter at the end of your URL.

    E.g. instead of https://www.example.com/feed/eo-events/ use https://www.example.com/feed/eo-events/?nocache9128rhdd

    Hope this helps, and thanks to Stephen for the fix.

    Thread Starter jeff9315

    (@jeff9315)

    OK … I’ve tested it briefly and it’s working and it looks really good. But I don’t know yet whether there are any side effects.

    Stephen … I wonder if it would be possible to have an include file referred to by the ical.php file that brings in an optional file if someone is having problems with incorrect ics feeds. Maybe an extra option in the settings that specifies whether to use the “ics-correction” include file.

    That would serve the dual-purpose of only people with problems would use it while insulating those of us with problems from updates you make to the core.

    Thanks SO MUCH !!!!!! Jeff

Viewing 11 replies - 1 through 11 (of 11 total)
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