Only certain events imported from .ics

Hi @matt6303,

I would say the issue is that the sync process never finishes — if it does finish, you should receive a green confirmation message with a total number of events synced.

If the wheel keeps spinning, most likely, the reason could be that your host is reaching it’s PHP memory limit and then the feed hangs.

I suggest increasing the memory limit, and try the feed refresh again — it should finish, then produce a confirmation or error message — this is how you know it finishes.

There are 3 ways to increase your PHP memory limit:

1. Add this to wp-config file:
define(‘WP_MEMORY_LIMIT’, ‘256M’);

or

2. Edit your PHP.ini file (requires access to your server files)
If you have access to your PHP.ini file, change the line in PHP.ini
If your line shows 64M, try 256M:
memory_limit = 256M

or

3. Edit your .htaccess file
If you don’t have access to PHP.ini try adding this to an .htaccess file:

php_value memory_limit 256M

Sunny,

Thanks for the reply. This site is part of a multisite and the memory limit was already set to 512M. I haven’t had any reports from the other three site administrators regarding any problems with their imports but I suppose this problem would apply to those sites also.

I tried bumping that value up to 768M and clicking Import again but that didn’t seem to make any difference.

I also updated WP_MAX_MEMORY_LIMIT to 768M, thinking that might make a difference on the admin side but the “Refreshing…” never goes away and the process never completes.

We have not made any changes to this site outside of routine updating of plugins. I will continue researching on my own but if you have any suggestions beyond the memory limit please let me know.

Would deleting outdated events from the Google Calendar, to reduce the size of the ICS file, make any positive difference for this issue?

This is the first AI1EC calendar issue we have had in 7 years…thanks for the quality plugin.

• This reply was modified 6 years, 2 months ago by Matt Scheidler.

Hi @matt6303,

Deleting old events will have minimal impact.

The version of PHP on your host may have a greater impact on memory usage. Versions 7.1 and 7.2 tend to use significantly more memory than past versions. If your host is running one of tose versions, I suggest switching down to version 5.6 if possible and see if it makes a difference.

If that doesn’t make any difference, then this problem could be a result of a plugin or theme conflict (usually caused by a caching or security plugin).. To fix this, please try a different theme temporarily such as Twenty Seventeen, or, disable all plugins and then check if the problem recurrs — then re-enable each one until you find which one caused the problem.

Let me know the results.

• This reply was modified 6 years, 2 months ago by Sunny Lal.

I had my hosting provider double-check settings for me. We set the Memory Limit to 512M – they said that PHP 5.6 vs PHP 7.2 shouldn’t make a difference for memory usage.

I tried running the Import again and got the following:

PHP Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 536870912 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 1427149832 bytes) in /home/xxxxxxx/public_html/wp-content/plugins/all-in-one-event-calendar/lib/iCal/iCalcreator-2.20/iCalcreator.class.php on line 8004.

I have yet to change the theme, disable plugins, etc. since that will have to be done in the middle of the night if it has to be done.

Hi @matt6303,

Tell them in situations identical to yours with other users, there is a MAJOR difference in memory usage and switching versions corrected the issue — so it’s worth testing first. It takes a second to switch. Also, the error you just provided, validates that there IS a memory problem.

Thanks for the reply. I will double back around with my host. But at the same time I’m not excited about the prospects of reverting back to 5.6 when we just went through the effort to upgrade to 7.2 — including getting rid of a plugin that wasn’t compatible. With 5.6 nearing end of life my preferred resolution involves getting everything to work properly on 7.2.

Hi @matt6303 I get the same error and have for a very long time and my host is wpengine. Do use them too? One thing I found out is that they have a PHP memory limit so it doesn’t matter what you set it to in the htaccess files etc. it will only goes as high as they have set, 512 I think.
If you want to chat off the forum, email me at [email protected].
Good luck and please let me know if you figure it out. It makes me crazy.

@great-taste, no I am not with WPEngine. I worked with my host’s support directly earlier today to confirm that they’re set up to define the memory limit within Cpanel rather than wp-config.php, .htaccess, or php.ini files. So I know for a fact I have 512M memory usage.

Is the site in question the same as the URL in your email address? If so I can tell that you’re running PHP 5.6. So possibly we have totally separate causes, or perhaps we do have the same cause but PHP version isn’t it.

Hi @matt6303,

Switching down to PHP 5.6 is a troubleshooting step at least, if it resolves the issue, it will confirm that there is a PHP memory issue.

Sunny,

We have just downgraded to PHP 5.6 and the Import Feed function worked immediately when I manually clicked the Refresh button.

On a different support thread I see where several months ago AI1EC was having problems with PHP 7.1 and 7.2. Were those particular problems cleared up, or do they persist? Is this a new issue or a known issue? I will be glad to work with my host to provide further information if it can aid you in arriving at a longterm solution.

My goal is to get this site back to 7.2 as soon as possible but for now I will leave it at 5.6 because the Calendar page is important and I need the ICS feed to work.

Hi @matt6303,

Yes, our plugin is now fully compatible with PHP 7.1 and 7.2.

The issue of extremely large memory usage with 7.1 and 7.2 exists not only in our plugin, but with respect to other servers and programs we run — it is something that our developers have noticed in general.

Your host will have to accomodate the extra memory required by PHP 7.2 — and this is something that all hosts are burdened with who are using the latest version.

Sunny, thanks for continuing to work with me on this issue.

This morning I created a duplicate website so that could troubleshoot without affecting the live site.

By default PHP was set to 7.0, and the ICS import worked fine. But when I moved to 7.1 I started getting the same “Refreshing…” as before. I then disabled all other plugins and also changed the theme to the stock WordPress TwentyTwelve theme, and the issue persists. I then increased the values for max_execution_time, max_input_time, and memory_limit (up to 1024M) but that didn’t make any difference either.

I checked with my host and their support said:

I do not think that it would be anything server side, as moving the php version in the only thing that is changing. The only thing that I could possibly think that it could be with the server is that each php version loads from a different php configuration. So if the plugin needs a certain module that could be the issue, that being said I did not see any errors that point to that being an issue. Are you able to ask the developer what modules are needed for the plugin to work?

I appreciate your help. With the end of life for 5.6 and 7.0 on the horizon I want to figure out how to get this multisite to at least 7.1 if not 7.2. Thanks.

HI @matt6303,

I can’t give you a specific list. Generally, common PHP modules that are enabled on most servers is enough. IConv is one that I know is necessary.

As I mentioned before, this is a memory usage issue as the newer versions of PHP uses vastly larger amounts of memory. Perhaps there is some configuration issue on your host — in any case, if switching PHP down fixes the issue, it means the cause of the failed feed is not enough memory, and that can be due to low memory allocation on the server.

Sunny,

Thanks for the reply.

I have run two additional tests:

1. Another server with different configuration with the same hosting company: import works with PHP 7.0 and doesn’t with 7.1.

2. Another server with a completely different hosting company: import doesn’t work with 7.1. (Unable to change version with this particular host, it’s free WordPress hosting with no control panel access.)

It’s the end of my business day, but tomorrow I am going to create a new site on our self-hosted server, which I’d imagine has a slightly different configuration than these other hosts, and I’ll let you know what I find.

Unfortunately, I won’t be able to install a new WordPress site on the self-hosted server I referred to yesterday. So that isn’t available as a comparison point. I’ll continue troubleshooting as best I can. What configuration are you using on your server that allows the Feed Import to work with PHP 7.1 and 7.2?