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Webcal

Unofficial URI scheme for accessing iCalendar files

Unofficial URI scheme for accessing iCalendar files

Webcal is a uniform resource identifier (URI) scheme for accessing iCalendar files.

The webcal scheme was devised for use with the Apple iCal application and is widely used for accessing iCalendar formatted files. , it has provisional status with IANA. The webcal: protocol prefix is used to trigger an external protocol handler which is passed the URL to the .ics file rather than the file itself, in much the same way feed is sometimes used to trigger external RSS readers. The idea is that with this protocol prefix the target .ics file should be subscribed to (read only) rather than downloaded or imported into the calendar application. Other than that webcal: URLs are equivalent to the same URL with http: or https:.

WebCal was also the name of an unrelated free web calendar PERL script, that allowed you to create and maintain an interactive events calendar or scheduling system on a Web site or app, and is no longer supported.

Handlers

Notable software packages and web applications supporting the webcal protocol include:

  • Apple Calendar
  • Google Calendar
  • Microsoft Outlook
  • Mozilla Thunderbird
  • Nextcloud

Alternative protocols

CalDAV and GroupDAV are both efforts to provide WebDAV-based interactive access to calendar stores with finer granularity. The CalDAV Access protocol has been standardized by the IETF and published as RFC 4791. Extensions to CalDAV for automated scheduling are also standardized, as RFC 6638.

Neither of those protocols call for using DAV style URIs. Instead, both drafts call for using the HTTP OPTIONS feature to return that the server supports calendaring extensions.

References

References

  1. (23 September 2012). "Resource Identifier (RI) Scheme name: webcal".
  2. (5 May 2015). "What's the difference between Webcal and WebDAV/CalDAV?".
  3. "AWSD / PERL Scripts / Webcal".
  4. (7 October 2011). "Open Webcal Links with Google Calendar".
  5. "View and Subscribe to Internet Calendars".
  6. "Creating New Calendars".
  7. "Import a calendar".
Info: Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

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