ics-query

Find out what happens in ICS calendar files - query and filter RFC 5545 compatible .ics files for events, journals, TODOs and more.

Installation

You can install this package from the PyPI.

pip install ics-query

For Windows, you can download ics-query.exe from our Releases.

Support

• Support using GitHub Sponsors
• Fund specific issues using Polar
• Support using Open Collective
• Support using thanks.dev

We accept donations to sustain our work, once or regular. Consider donating money to open-source as everyone benefits.

Supported Features

This library is based on

• recurring-ical-events
• icalendar
• x-wr-timezone

For a list of supported features and RFC compatibility, please refer to their documentation, too.

Usage

ics-query is a command line tool that aims to make icalendar occurance calculations accessible and easy. This section walks you though the different functionalities.

ics-query --help

Examples

You can get a calendar from the web and see what is on. In this example, we show which German National Holidays happening in August 2024:

$ wget -qO- 'https://www.calendarlabs.com/ical-calendar/ics/46/Germany_Holidays.ics' | ics-query at 2024-08 - -
BEGIN:VEVENT
SUMMARY:Assumption Day (BY\, SL)
DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20240815
DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20240815
DTSTAMP:20231013T092513Z
UID:65290cf9326601697189113@calendarlabs.com
SEQUENCE:0
DESCRIPTION:Visit https://calendarlabs.com/holidays/us/the-assumption-of-m
 ary.php to know more about Assumption Day (BY\, SL). \n\n Like us on Faceb
 ook: http://fb.com/calendarlabs to get updates
LOCATION:Germany
STATUS:CONFIRMED
TRANSP:TRANSPARENT
END:VEVENT

In the following example, we query a calendar file and print the result.

$ ics-query at 2019-03-04 one-event.ics -
BEGIN:VEVENT
SUMMARY:test1
DTSTART;TZID=Europe/Berlin:20190304T080000
DTEND;TZID=Europe/Berlin:20190304T083000
DTSTAMP:20190303T111937
UID:UYDQSG9TH4DE0WM3QFL2J
CREATED:20190303T111937
LAST-MODIFIED:20190303T111937
END:VEVENT

We can concatenate calendars and pipe them into ics-query. In the example below, we get all events that happen right now in two calendars.

$ cat calendar1.ics calendar2.ics | ics-query at `date +%Y%m%d%H%M%S` - -
BEGIN:VEVENT
...

Piping calendars

You can pipe one or more calendars into the input.

cat calendar.ics | ics-query first -

Events at Certain Times

You can query which events happen at certain times:

ics-query at TIME calendar.ics -

The format of TIME:

TIME	description
2019	the whole year 2019
2019-08	August 2019
2019-08-12	12th of August 2019
2019-08-12T17	17:00-18:00 at the 12th of August 2019
2019-08-12T17:20	17:20-17:21 at the 12th of August 2019
2019-08-12T17:20:00	17:20 at the 12th of August 2019

Please see the command documentation for more help:

ics-query at --help
ics-query --help

You can get all events that happen at a certain day.

ics-query at --components VEVENT 2029-12-24 calendar.ics

You can get all events that happen today.

ics-query at --components VEVENT `date +%Y-%m-%d` calendar.ics

You can get all TODOs that happen in a certain month.

ics-query at --components VTODO 2029-12-24 calendar.ics

Events within a Time Span

You can query which events happen between certain times:

ics-query between START END calendar.ics -
ics-query between START DURATION calendar.ics -

Please see the command documentation for more help:

ics-query between --help
ics-query --help

The format of START and END with examples:

START or END	Description
2019	the whole year 2019
2019-08	August 2019
2019-08-12	12th of August 2019
2019-08-12T17	17:00-18:00 at the 12th of August 2019
2019-08-12T17:20	17:20-17:21 at the 12th of August 2019
2019-08-12T17:20:00	17:20 at the 12th of August 2019

Instead of an absolute time, you can specify a duration after the START. The + is optional.

DURATION	Description
+1d	one more day
+1h	one more hour
+1m	one more minute
+1s	one more second
+3600s	one more hour or 3600 seconds
+5d10h	five more days and 10 more hours

Time Span Examples

This example returns the occurrences within the next week:

ics-query between `date +%Y%m%d` +7d calendar.ics -

This example saves the events from the 1st of May 2024 to the 10th of June in events.ics:

ics-query between --component VEVENT 2024-5-1 2024-6-10 calendar.ics events.ics

In this example, you can check what is happening on New Years Eve 2025 around midnight:

ics-query between 2025-12-31T21:00 +6h calendar.ics events.ics

ics-query all - the whole calendar

You can get everything that is happening in a calendar but that can be a lot!

ics-query all calendar.ics

Filtering Components

We support different component types: VEVENT, VJOURNAL and VTODO. By default, we include all types in the result.

You can specify which components you would like to get using the --component or -c parameter.

-c VEVENT   # only events
-c VTODO    # only TODOs
-c VJOURNAL # only journal entries
-c VEVENT -c VTODO # only events and journal entries

This example returns the first event of a calendar.

ics-query first -c VEVENT calendar.ics -

This option is also available as ICS_QUERY_COMPONENT variable.

export ICS_QUERY_COMPONENT=VEVENT
# from now on, you will get only events
ics-query first calendar.ics

Please see the command documentation for more help:

ics-query --help

Timezones

You can set the timezone of the query, otherwise the event's local timezone is used and you might miss events in your own timezone.

The first event at New Year 2000 in the event's local time:

ics-query at 2000-01-01 calendar.ics

The first event at New Year 2000 in your local time:

ics-query at --tz=localtime 2000-01-01 calendar.ics

The first event at New Year 2000 in UTC:

ics-query at --tz=UTC 2000-01-01 calendar.ics

The first event at New Year 2000 in Berlin time:

ics-query at --tz=Europe/Berlin 2000-01-01 calendar.ics

You can also use the ICS_QUERY_TZ variable.

export ICS_QUERY_TZ=localtime
# from now on, we use your local time
ics-query at 2000-01-01 calendar.ics

For all avaiable timezones see:

ics-query --available-timezones

Please see the command documentation for more help:

ics-query --help

Version Fixing

If you use this library in your code, you may want to make sure that updates can be received but they do not break your code. The version numbers are handeled this way: a.b.c example: 0.1.12

• c is changed for each minor bug fix.
• b is changed whenever new features are added.
• a is changed when the interface or major assumptions change that may break your code.

So, I recommend to version-fix this library to stay with the same a while b and c can change.

Development

This section should set you up for developing ics-query.

Testing

This project's development is driven by tests. Tests assure a consistent interface and less knowledge lost over time. If you like to change the code, tests help that nothing breaks in the future. They are required in that sense. Example code and ics files can be transferred into tests and speed up fixing bugs.

You can view the tests in the test folder If you have a calendar ICS file for which this library does not generate the desired output, you can add it to the test/calendars folder and write tests for what you expect. If you like, open an issue first, e.g. to discuss the changes and how to go about it.

To run the tests, we use tox. tox tests all different Python versions which we want to be compatible to.

pip3 install tox

To run all the tests:

tox

To run the tests in a specific Python version:

tox -e py39

We use ruff to format the code. Run this to format the code and show problems:

tox -e ruff

New Release

Renovate updates the dependencies automatically on the main branch. New commits on main are automatically published with an increased PATCH version number.

To release a new version with a new MINOR or MAJOR version number change, follow these steps:

1. edit the Changelog Section

2. create a commit and push it

3. wait for GitHub Actions to finish the build

4. create a tag and push it

   git tag v0.1.0
   git push origin v0.1.0

5. Notify the issues about their release

Changelog

We automatically release the versions that only update dependencies. If the version you installed does not show up here, only the dependencies have been updated.

• v0.4.1

  • Automatic release with patch level version number increased
  • Increase patch version instead of minor version for automatic releases

• v0.3.4

  • Update dependencies
  • Start automatic release of dependencies increasing the version number

• v0.3.3b

  • Update dependencies

• v0.3.2b

  • Fix that --tz localtime would use localtime as timezone name instead of the local timezone name.
  • Fix tests on Windows
  • Add Windows .exe build artifact

• v0.3.1b

  • Add --license option

• v0.3.0b

  • Add --tz timezone parameter
  • Add ics-query all to get all occurrences

• v0.2.1a

  • Add --component to filter component types VEVENT, VJOURNAL and VTODO

• v0.2.0a

  • Add ics-query first <calendar> <output> for earliest occurrences
  • Add ics-query between <span_start> <span_stop> <calendar> <output> to query time ranges

• v0.1.1a

  • Add --version
  • Add ics-query at <date> <calendar> <output>
  • Add support for multiple calendars in one input

• v0.1.0a

  • Update Python version compatibility
  • Add development documentation

• v0.0.1a

  • first version

Related Work

• icalBuddy
• Blog Post
• #icsquery on mastodon

Vision

This section shows where we would like to get to.

ics-query --select-index - reduce output size

Examples: 0,2,4 0-10

ics-query --select-uid - filter by uid

How to edit an event

To edit a component like an event, you can append it to the calendar and increase the sequence number.

Example:

1. get the event --select-index=0
2. change the summary
3. increase sequence number
4. add the event to the end of the calendar file
5. show that the occurrence has changed

Notifications

Examples:

• There are x todos in the next hour
• There are x events today
• Please write a journal entry!