[Plugin: AmR iCal Events List] Error finding or parsing ical calendar

nevermind sorted it! -_-

what was the solution???
I updated to the latest amr-ical and it stopped working…

all I get now is this message
Error finding or parsing ical calendar https://www.facebook.com/ical/u.php?uid=561935077&key=13c00f3f20

on https://www.drinklocal.com

Hi weid,

I’m looking at it, so far only happens with your facebook url. Other urls are working… I’ll explore a bit further…

OOOhhhh – try opening that file in notepad – i’m getting solid black lines and musical characters and upward arrows and square boxes

Maybe it is some sort of encoding problem? Do you have a more normal facebook url you could test with as an alternate ?

Google managed to load it, so possible it has allowed for these characters in a way that either wordpress or php need to be told to do.

Nothing has really changed on the import side so maybe it is a new event causing the problem?

Hi weid
2 things:
1) When the plugin does a fopen on the url, facebook is returning this message:

Sorry, this URL is invalid or has expired

instead of the ics file.

If I access the ics file via the browser, save it on my local server and then get the plugin to read it from there (to get around the face book thing), it loads fine. So the funny characters are NOT the problem. The problem is that fopen is not working with facebook.

I have to go cook dinner now but will have google later to see if we can shed light on the fopen problem: https://www.google.com.au/search?q=facebook+fopen

2) wrt your file : Has your facebook calendar been hacked ? or is this below a genuine event ?

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Hi – had a further look and I have to say I’m stumped – plugin uses wordpresses remote open function (not the fopen – that’s the cached file)
That function tries all sorts of ways.

I tried with a test facebook one myself (urg)- same problem and with a bit of a google around, looks like not unheard of: see support.webs.com

Looking at the way it works in facebook the url is more aimed at exporting, rather than subscribing. Maybe facebook have changed their privacy stuff a bit?

Meanwhile a QUICK Temp FIX for your site would be to export to google, then use the google url. You could get google to “subscribe” – different from import but I have found that google updates to ics files are a bit slow.

that VIP one was a valid event but i did remove it to test your theory….

not sure why it just stopped working caus eit was working great before…

did you mean to say above that it’s not working with MY facebook URL or anyone’s facebook url???

John

Hi – I think that to use facebook events one needs to ensure that a properly public ics file is available. I have had other people use

https://www.fbcal.com/ or https://apps.facebook.com/fbcalendar/ – self named “the missing facebook calendar”

and I tried it out – If you go through the “create” proces… and then when you have a subscribe option there is a “or just download a copy here”. copy the link in the “here”.

I tested this here
https://icalevents.anmari.com/test/?page_id=249
and it works fine.

I have also posted a query in the facebook forum, but at this stage It appears to me that it is a facebook ‘thing’.

Ie: the export link is not also a subscribe link.

Hope that all makes sense.

confused… this seems to copy the actual file… wouldn’t that mean I would have to do this every time I want to update as opposed to the way it used to work in real time??

sorry may be missing the boat here
John

Hi Weid,

I don’t want to be unhelpful, however this is now getting into facebook support territory which is not my area. I think you either need to try another ics editor (google?) or look at using amr-events, and maybe integrate your posts or ics file back to facebook if facebook is important to you)

It seems that this problem (getting a programmatically accessible public SUBSCRIBABLE url to work with the plugin) is limited to facebook – maybe they have no way to have a subscribable url (not just exportable). I have had no complaints from elsewhere!

I would not be surprised if it is NOT easy to solve – every time I try to get something to integrate with anything facebook related, there are problems. It seems I am not alone in wanting to stay away from it.

Some recent discussions elsewhere on the web:

https://ryanwaggoner.com/2010/09/im-done-building-facebook-apps-for-clients/

https://blog.programmableweb.com/2010/10/12/the-facebook-api-an-ever-changing-source-of-frustration

So I took your advice and it was working but I just updated and it’s broke again giving me this error:

Warning: Events may be out of date. Operation timed out after 5000 milliseconds with 0 bytes received Using File last cached at Fri