Encoding newlines in iCal files

Eric_P_65070 0
Viewed 48975

I'm trying to figure out how to encode newlines in the DESCRIPTION part of an iCal file in such a way that they will import properly into Outlook, Google Calendar and the Apple Calendar.

The original code I inherited used "=0D=0A" with a quoted-printable encoding, which works great in Outlook, but not in Google Calendar.

The spec seems to say you should use "\n" to represent a newline. This works great in Google Calendar, but Outlook just puts the literal "\n" characters in there.

Is there a way you've done this that will work consistently accross calendaring systems?

icalendar
8 Answers

OK, looks like I'm answering my own question.

The correct way to do it is to use "\n" for line breaks. Outlook did not recognize this because I had "ENCODING=quoted-printable" on the description. Once I removed that, Outlook displayed the new lines correctly.

Also, to get the file to open correctly in Apple iCal, you need to use "VERSION:2.0" for the file version. If you use "VERSION:1.0", it will tell you it can't read the file (even though it conforms to the 1.0 spec).

NOTE: As others have mentioned, the file actually has to contain the literal string \n. Since most languages treat that as an escape sequence meaning a newline character, you probably need to use the string \\n in your code.

Eric_P_650700

This is my answer for DESCRIPTION

$filev = str_replace("\r\n", '\\n', $p);
$filev = str_replace("<br>",'\\n',$filev);
$filev = (str_replace(";","\;",str_replace(",",'\,',$filev)));
user_87161450

I had to escape the output in the string to set a literal "\n" in the output file. Like so. Worked a charm.

$events .= "DESCRIPTION:" . str_replace("\n","\\n",str_replace(";","\;",str_replace(",",'\,',get_event_contents()))) . "\n";
user_9147820

=0D=0A works with Outlook, but you'll need to change the DESCRIPTION key, so that line breaks can be interpreted.

DESCRIPTION;ENCODING=QUOTED-PRINTABLE:

Enter your text after the colon, using =0D=0A for line breaks. Outlook will read the line breaks correctly. Using \\n only works if you're using DESCRIPTION without ENCODING:QUOTED-PRINTABLE.

I'm using VERSION:2.0

user_120277340
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