iCal feeds

As you might or might not know, iCal is a format to store and share calendar events. Calendar applications use this format to display events, but you can also share and iCal feed in a website similar to how you would share an RSS feed.

My interest for this of feeds started a couple of months ago when I came across a post by Taylor. I learned that meetup.com offers a feed for the events of a specific group. I found it very convenient after using it a for a while.

Sadly, I haven’t found many websites that share calendars using this method. Twitch offers iCal feeds for channels, but it has some problems. If you’re into F1, you can subscribe to the events of the current season. You need to create an account to access it.

Apart from the meetup events I’ve been using iCal feeds to keep up to date with the schedule of wrestling shows. For this, I’ve been using TVmaze, which offers a basic feed for the TV shows you have on your favorite list.

Outside the personal use cases, it seems like iCal feeds are also used so synchronize the availability of rentals and reservations between booking applications like Airbnb and Booking.com. I haven’t done much research regarding this use case yet, but I ever get a gig working on a booking management system I know where to look.