Monday, August 20, 2012

Feed iCalendar (.ics) file with dropbox

It is easy to host an iCalendar feed so other people can subscribe to it, even if you don't have your own hosting environment.

One solution is to use dropbox.

Dropbox allows you to share your files publicly by putting the files in the 'Public' folder.

*Update 3/6/2013*
I just realized that Dropbox made a change to how you can make your file public.
The following method can still be achieved, but for some the instruction might be little different.
Please read dropbox's article about this.
*End Update*

Here is how you can do this using the iCalendar feed creator tool. You can also use any other tool that can generate an .ics file.

  1. Create some events you want to share.

  2. Click "Generate iCal" button.
  3. Click "Download iCal File" to start the download.

  4. Save the file to your dropbox's Public folder.

  5. Navigate to the downloaded file, right click and choose "Copy Public link". This will put the public url of this file into the clipboard.

    The link will look something like this: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/XXXXXXXX/myevents.ics


     
  6. Share the dropbox link to people who you want to share the event with. Many calendar application will allow you to subscribe to the iCalendar events (feed) hosted with dropbox.

    Note: the events will be public. Anyone who knows (or who can figure out) the url can access the feed.