----------------------------------------
       Google Calendar -> calcurse synchronise one way without CalDAV/OAuth2
       January 24th, 2019
       ----------------------------------------
       
       calcurse is a nice ncurses calendar, appointment and to-do program for
       terminal use... It includes an extremely clunky ALPHA software called
       calcurse-caldav to synchronise with CalDAV servers or Google Calendar
       (using OAuth2 Authentication).
       
       If, like myself, you have ever used calcurse with Google Calendar, you
       may have noticed that calcurse-caldav is indeed alpha software, and
       should probably be avoided by all but the most hardcore users and
       developers... Fortunately in my case I've found a workaround that suits
       me, as I only need to synchronise one-way, from Google to my local
       machine. The workaround is simple: many calendars on Google Calendars
       have publicly-available addresses in iCal format and some have secret
       addresses in iCal format... You can find them by going to
       calendar.google.com, click the hamburger (why isn't it a cheeseburger?)
       menu at the top-left so that "My calendars" and "Other calendars" are
       displayed in the bar on the left. Hover over a calendar you are
       interested in and hit the three-dot menu and then "Settings and sharing".
       The URLs (if available) will be in the "Integrate calendar section" and
       labeled as "Public address in iCal format" and/or "Secret address in iCal
       format".
       
       I was able to import my personal calendar, and some holiday calendars
       that I follow (en.christian#holiday, en.philippines#holiday,
       en-gb.usa#holiday, and en.islamic#holiday).  I could not pull-in
       #contacts (birthdays and anniversary dates from Google Contacts, and some
       weird legacy crap from Google+ which nobody cares about) and family.
       
       The way I get calcurse to do what I want is via a simple function in my
       shell which does the following: sets the windows title (if I'm running in
       tmux or some kind of graphical terminal emuilator {xterm}), sets
       appropriate file permissions (I don't have anything secret, but I do want
       any other users to have to work to snoop on my files, haha!), nukes
       almost everything on startup (this is important, because calcurse import
       can't tell if an event is a duplicate, and they can pile up rather
       quickly), downloads the iCal files from Google, imports the iCal files,
       and finally actually runs calcurse.
       I had to set ~/calcurse/apts and ~/calcurse/notes/ to symlink to a tmp
       directory.
       
       Here's what I came up with in the end:
       
       calcurse() {
       echo -ne '\033k'calcurse'\033\\'
       umask 027
       rm -rf /tmp/calcurse-zachary/
       mkdir -p /tmp/calcurse-zachary/notes
       wget -q https://SECRETURL /tmp/calcurse-zachary/zach.ics
       wget -q http://bit.ly/2FKrneX -O /tmp/calcurse-zachary/christian_holidays
       wget -q http://bit.ly2WeQgnO -O /tmp/calcurse-zachary/philippine_holidays
       wget -q http://bit.ly/2FNXryq -O /tmp/calcurse-zachary/us_holidays.ics
       wget -q http://bit.ly/2RIx0As -O /tmp/calcurse-zachary/islamic_holidays
       /usr/bin/calcurse -qi /tmp/calcurse-zachary/zach.ics
       /usr/bin/calcurse -qi /tmp/calcurse-zachary/christian_holidays
       /usr/bin/calcurse -qi /tmp/calcurse-zachary/philippine_holidays
       /usr/bin/calcurse -qi /tmp/calcurse-zachary/us_holidays.ics
       /usr/bin/calcurse -qi /tmp/calcurse-zachary/islamic_holidays
       /usr/bin/calcurse $@
       echo -ne '\033k'sh'\033\\'
       }
       
       
       
       That shell function will refresh calcurse whenever I open it.... If I
       leave it open for days and need an update, I just close it and then open
       it again. Easy.
       ----------------------------------------
 (DIR) Back to phlog index
 (DIR) gopher.zcrayfish.soy gopher root
       This phlog entry has been read 2469 times.
       Future direct comment submission has been disabled for this phlog entry.
       Comments are still accepted by email, please send to:
       zacharygopher@gopher.zcrayfish.soy
       Be sure to include the post title in the subject line! Thanks!
       Nobody has commented on this post.