# Calendar Solution

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/calendar-solution/130593>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [February 29, 2008, 5:30pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/calendar-solution/130593 "2008-02-29T17:30:38Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![akitaonrails](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/71e660/32.png) [@akitaonrails](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/akitaonrails)\
**Post date:** [February 29, 2008, 5:30pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/calendar-solution/130593/1 "2008-02-29T17:30:38Z")

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Hi, I have a requirement in a project to have something like a “group  
calendar” meaning that I am going to have several different calendar  
(one per person) that are going to cross some global calendar (local  
and national holydays, for example).

I was thinking that maybe vPIM or iCalendar would to the trick while  
giving me RFC compliance along the way. But the thing that bothers me  
is that they are file-based. So each calendar is stored in a .ics file  
instead of a database.

The problem is: how do I use vPIM or iCalendar to cross multiple  
calendars events? I also think it would not be scalable to load the  
full .ics file for each logged in user in a RoR app, right?

What would be a better solution? Maybe installing a full iCal Server  
(Apple’s?) and creating some sort of web-service-like integration from  
RoR to this server?

Anyone has any experience on the matter? Googling around yielded  
nothing useful so far.

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**Author:** ![akitaonrails](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/71e660/32.png) [@akitaonrails](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/akitaonrails)\
**Post date:** [March 1, 2008, 2:20am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/calendar-solution/130593/2 "2008-03-01T02:20:32Z")

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On Fri, 2008-02-29 at 08:29 -0800, AkitaOnRails wrote:

> The problem is: how do I use vPIM or iCalendar to cross multiple  
> calendars events? I also think it would not be scalable to load the  
> full .ics file for each logged in user in a RoR app, right?
> 
> What would be a better solution? Maybe installing a full iCal Server  
> (Apple’s?) and creating some sort of web-service-like integration from  
> RoR to this server?
> 
> Anyone has any experience on the matter? Googling around yielded  
> nothing useful so far.

* * *

You can roll your own with rails - use the gem icalendar (find it at  
[www.rubyforge.org](http://www.rubyforge.org))

It’s easy enough to adapt to ActiveRecord and store the events in a db  
and yet still export ics files

Craig