Ask HN: Best API format for recurring schedules?

5 points by seveibar 3y ago ↗ HN

I'm trying to develop a standard by which people can submit recurring schedules for things like thermostats and access codes for smart locks for seam.co. I couldn't find any standard for recurring schedules other than the iCalendar format, which seems a bit unwieldy for a JSON API.

Cron is a bit limited, e.g. doesn't represent ranges of time.

This seems like a really common problem, anybody solving this in their work today?

5 comments

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mooreds 3y ago ↗

I'd probably start with google calendar's docs.

Looks like it has a decent API for this: https://developers.google.com/calendar/api/guides/recurringe...

Edit: also this: https://developers.google.com/calendar/api/v3/reference/even...

seveibar 3y ago ↗

The first link looks like a good translation of the iCalendar to JSON, I guess you can't really beat the iCalendar standard when it comes to representing events!

jayknight 3y ago ↗

Many years ago, I built a calendaring system and I ended up implementing iCalendar but in a database instead of a file. I would not recommend doing it the way I did, but I did come to the conclusion that if you want to support the same types of recurrences, you really should be very familiar with how icalendar handles things or you'll forget something important.

throwaway888abc 3y ago ↗

I would use "recurrence rules", but curious to hear more.

https://icalendar.org/iCalendar-RFC-5545/3-8-5-3-recurrence-...

https://jakubroztocil.github.io/rrule/

https://github.com/jakubroztocil/rrule

All best with your project

seveibar 3y ago ↗

Those libraries are helpful thanks! I didn't know icalendar had an RFC, very helpful!