# Managing Google Calendar Integration

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/managing-google-calendar-integration/133510>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [April 1, 2008, 6:24am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/managing-google-calendar-integration/133510 "2008-04-01T06:24:53Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 8\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![xgamerx](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/x/d2c977/32.png) [@xgamerx](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/xgamerx)\
**Post date:** [April 1, 2008, 6:24am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/managing-google-calendar-integration/133510/1 "2008-04-01T06:24:53Z")

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Alright, I have an issue and I would love some advice. Here is the  
situation:

I am developing a site which syncs with Google C… You can  
imagine, the whole bit: list of events, create events, delete events,  
all from this from our rails site.

My problem is the request times are just too slow for the initial  
listing of the events. Basically, the events are being listed on a  
primary profile page and I can’t allow the user to have to wait that  
long to see their page.

I assume the answer to this is “offload to backgroundrb” or “load the  
event list using ajax” or a combination of both. I just want to hear  
opinions on how others would manage this.

Short Recap: User has a profile page which lists the next 5 upcoming  
events on their calendar as part of the page. I need this page to load  
reasonably fast but the request to GoogleCalendar takes very long.

Could someone explain the basic process for how to do this properly in  
rails. I know I need to load the Google C. using ajax or at least  
I guessed but what would be the “best practice” method to choose…

1. create an action in rails that parses google calendar lists into an  
array of events and then use an ajax request to query that action, get  
the array and then display it on the javascript end

2. create a background worker that queries google calendar and then  
create a rails action that starts up the background worker, gets the  
events and returns them to the page invoked from an ajax request.

3. have a background worker that is continously querying google calendar  
every 10 minutes for all the upcoming events for all the users and then  
store them in a hash in the worker. then just query the worker and be  
given the events immediately and print them to the screen

4. something inevitably smarter?

Please help. sorry this is long.

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**Author:** ![xgamerx](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/x/d2c977/32.png) [@xgamerx](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/xgamerx)\
**Post date:** [April 21, 2008, 12:14pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/managing-google-calendar-integration/133510/2 "2008-04-21T12:14:50Z")

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Hi Nathan

I’m in the process of scoping out a project which sounds identical to  
yours.

So far I’ve found two libraries out there, I think there may be more

sudo gem install googlecalendar

> **[GoogleCalendar4Rails](http://googlecalendar4rails.blogspot.com/)**
>
> Google calendar API for Ruby and Rails

[http://googlecalendar.rubyforge.org/plugins/doc/](http://googlecalendar.rubyforge.org/plugins/doc/)

I’ve built a simple app with googlecalendar and I’m in touch with  
Benjamin, he’s being very patient with me 🙂 Still got some problems  
using it.

sudo gem install gcalapi  
[http://rubyforge.org/projects/gcalapi/](http://rubyforge.org/projects/gcalapi/)

Just found this one, I’ll be looking at it today.

Maybe we could share how we’re getting on?

It’s a shame there isn’t an official google one, I understand there may  
be some pressure on Google to do sort it out.

Matt

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**Author:** ![xgamerx](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/x/d2c977/32.png) [@xgamerx](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/xgamerx)\
**Post date:** [April 21, 2008, 12:52pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/managing-google-calendar-integration/133510/3 "2008-04-21T12:52:01Z")

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Hi Nathan

Great to hear from someone else going through this process. I’ve gone  
down the googlecalendar route for now.

I’m certain we’ll be able to share, I too will have to think long and  
hard about processing speeds in the very near future, got to make all  
the things I need to work work first though. 🙂

One problem I’ve got right now is posting events to Calendars that are  
not your default calendar.

Have you got that working? I can’t work out what format of the URI to  
use, it’s proving to be a pain in the ass. I think it’s becuase some  
people call it something, and some other people call it another.

If you have got it working, I’d love to see an example of the URI format  
you used?

Speak soon

matt

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![xgamerx](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/x/d2c977/32.png) [@xgamerx](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/xgamerx)\
**Post date:** [April 21, 2008, 12:46pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/managing-google-calendar-integration/133510/4 "2008-04-21T12:46:30Z")

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Hey Matt,

Thanks for the reply. I actually found “gcalapi” and started using it.  
gcalapi didn’t have support for everything I needed but I worked with it  
and I have pulled off most of the google calendar actions that I needed.  
I can create calendars, create, edit, and remove events. gcalapi was a  
great start which got me going.

I am still having trouble with how to make Google C. processing  
faster. Adding events, querying calendars, etc takes forever. For now, I  
put off moving the actions to a background worker, but inevitably I will  
have to do this eventually.

I am definitely open to sharing any tips we come across. Let me know if  
there is any particular action you need help figuring out, particularly  
if you work with gcalapi.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![xgamerx](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/x/d2c977/32.png) [@xgamerx](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/xgamerx)\
**Post date:** [June 26, 2008, 6:50am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/managing-google-calendar-integration/133510/5 "2008-06-26T06:50:21Z")

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Hey I was wondering how you test the google calendar implementation.  
It seems that you cannot send actually data to google on your local  
server, so I am wondering if there is a way around this. Or do I need  
to launch the site on an actual server? thanks.

On Mar 31, 9:24 pm, Nathan E. \<rails-mailing-l…@andreas-

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**Author:** ![xgamerx](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/x/d2c977/32.png) [@xgamerx](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/xgamerx)\
**Post date:** [June 19, 2008, 12:04pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/managing-google-calendar-integration/133510/6 "2008-06-19T12:04:08Z")

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Hey, sorry to bother you like this but I am starting a ruby rails  
calendar project and considering using gcalapi. I was just wondering  
how it ended up working out and how your overall experience with it  
was. It doesnt look like theres any tutorials or blogs on how to use  
it so I am a little intimidated. Thanks, Dave

On Apr 21, 3:46 am, Nathan E. \<rails-mailing-l…@andreas-

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![xgamerx](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/x/d2c977/32.png) [@xgamerx](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/xgamerx)\
**Post date:** [June 26, 2008, 6:50am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/managing-google-calendar-integration/133510/7 "2008-06-26T06:50:56Z")

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Hey I was wondering how you test the google calendar implementation.  
It seems that you cannot send actually data to google on your local  
server, so I am wondering if there is a way around this. Or do I need  
to launch the site on an actual server? thanks.

On Apr 21, 3:46 am, Nathan E. \<rails-mailing-l…@andreas-

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![xgamerx](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/x/d2c977/32.png) [@xgamerx](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/xgamerx)\
**Post date:** [June 26, 2008, 8:27am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/managing-google-calendar-integration/133510/8 "2008-06-26T08:27:48Z")

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Hey I didn’t see this thread again until now, but let me try to go  
through here and cover a few things:

Matt mentioned a problem with dealing with non-default calendar. With  
the gcalapi this is actually quite easy. I am only familiar with the  
gcalapi library because it has worked out for me so far. Long story  
short, there is a method called ‘calendars’

[http://gcalapi.rubyforge.org/classes/GoogleCalendar/Calendar.html#M000012](http://gcalapi.rubyforge.org/classes/GoogleCalendar/Calendar.html#M000012)

This method returns a list of all the calendars for a given google  
account. Then I can create a new calendar like so:

GoogleCalendar::Calendar.new(@srv, feed)

and then query for events or create new events from there. It abstracts  
the need to mess with the URL manually.

I have not tried any alternatives but I was pretty satisfied with  
gcalapi. There are not too many tutorials. I learned how to use it  
through the rdocs

[http://gcalapi.rubyforge.org/](http://gcalapi.rubyforge.org/)

and also just by straight up looking at the source code.

Overall tho, using it was pretty self explanatory.

As far as testing the google calendar implementation, this is where  
mocks/stubs come in handy. Check out the library ‘mocha’

[http://mocha.rubyforge.org/](http://mocha.rubyforge.org/)

You are right that you can’t actually interact with GoogleCalendar. So  
instead you use mocks and stubs to ‘simulate’ the responses Google  
Calendar would give you in order to test your handling of the response.

Hope that helps

- Nathan

P.S. I am still not quite sure the proper method for offloading the  
event query