Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Java code to send meeting request using iCal4j

iCalendar is a computer file format which allows Internet users to send meeting requests and tasks to other Internet users, via email, or sharing files with an extension of .ics. Recipients of the iCalendar data file (with supporting software, such as an email client or calendar application) can respond to the sender easily or counter propose another meeting date/time.

iCalendar is used and supported by a large number of products, including Google Calendar, Apple iCal,IBM Lotus Notes,Yahoo Calendar, Microsoft Outlook etc

iCal4j is an API which is used to modifying existing iCalendar data or creating new iCalendar data. To know more about iCal4j, click here.

About the example 

This example is straight forward, we will create a calendar (net.fortuna.ical4j.model.Calendar) object and add a Meeting event to it. You can set various properties to the event like subject, location, description etc. Obviously you can customize it according to your requirement. This example will generate a .ics file (TestCalendar.ics). You can send this generated file via email to interested parties. Please see the below self explanatory java program.

For running below example you will need to add below mentioned JAR files in your classpath.
  • ical4j-1.0.3.jar
  • backport-util-concurrent-3.1.jar
  • commons-logging-1.1.1.jar
  • commons-lang-2.6.jar
To download the above JAR file, click here.