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Webcal is a uniform resource identifier (URI) scheme for accessing iCalendar files. WebCal allows you to create and maintain an interactive events calendar or scheduling system on a Web site or app. [1] [ dead link ]
The webcal
scheme was devised for use with the Apple iCal application and has become a common de facto standard for accessing iCalendar formatted files via WebDAV, usually using GET method.[ citation needed ] It is not an official URI scheme, such as http
and ftp
, as registered with IANA. As of 23 September 2012 [update] , the webcal scheme has provisional status with IANA. [2] The Webcal protocol prefix is used to trigger an external protocol handler which is passed the URL of the .ics file rather than being passed the downloaded contents of the file, in much the same way feed
is sometimes used to trigger external RSS readers. The idea is that with this protocol prefix the target file should be subscribed to rather than imported into the calendar application as would happen with a simple download.
Notable software packages and web applications supporting the webcal protocol include:
CalDAV and GroupDAV are both efforts to provide WebDAV-based 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.
A Uniform Resource Identifier (URI), formerly Universal Resource Identifier, is a unique sequence of characters that identifies an abstract or physical resource, such as resources on a webpage, mail address, phone number, books, real-world objects such as people and places, concepts. URIs are used to identify anything described using the Resource Description Framework (RDF), for example, concepts that are part of an ontology defined using the Web Ontology Language (OWL), and people who are described using the Friend of a Friend vocabulary would each have an individual URI.
Microsoft Outlook is a personal information manager software system from Microsoft, available as a part of the Microsoft 365 software suites. Though primarily being popular as an email client for businesses, Outlook also includes functions such as calendaring, task managing, contact managing, note-taking, journal logging, web browsing, and RSS news aggregation.
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The Internet Calendaring and Scheduling Core Object Specification (iCalendar) is a media type which allows users to store and exchange calendaring and scheduling information such as events, to-dos, journal entries, and free/busy information, and together with its associated standards has been a cornerstone of the standardization and interoperability of digital calendars across different vendors. Files formatted according to the specification usually have an extension of .ics. With supporting software, such as an email reader or calendar application, recipients of an iCalendar data file can respond to the sender easily or counter-propose another meeting date/time. The file format is specified in a proposed Internet standard for calendar data exchange. The standard and file type are sometimes referred to as "iCal", which was the name of the Apple Inc. calendar program until 2012, which provides one of the implementations of the standard.
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about is an internal URI scheme implemented in various Web browsers to reveal internal state and built-in functions. It is an IANA officially registered scheme, and is standardized.
Calendaring Extensions to WebDAV, or CalDAV, is an Internet standard allowing a client to access and manage calendar data along with the ability to schedule meetings with users on the same or on remote servers. It lets multiple users in different locations share, search and synchronize calendar data. It extends the WebDAV specification and uses the iCalendar format for the calendar data. The access protocol is defined by RFC 4791. Extensions to CalDAV for scheduling are standardized as RFC 6638. The protocol is used by many important open-source applications.
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DAViCal is a server for calendar sharing. It is an implementation of the CalDAV protocol which is designed for storing calendaring resources on a remote shared server. Although the events are stored in a SQL database the information between client and server is transferred in the iCalendar format.
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A well-known URI is a Uniform Resource Identifier for URL path prefixes that start with /.well-known/
. They are implemented in webservers so that requests to the servers for well-known services or information are available at URLs consistent well-known locations across servers.
The JSON Meta Application Protocol (JMAP) is a set of related open Internet Standard protocols for handling email. JMAP is implemented using JSON APIs over HTTP and has been developed as an alternative to IMAP/SMTP and proprietary email APIs such as Google's Gmail and Microsoft's MAPI . Additional protocols and data models being built on top of the core of JMAP for handling contacts and calendar synchronization are meant to be potential replacements for CardDAV and CalDAV, and other support is currently in the works.