Which instance of an edited iCal event series is the latest

Question

Is there a way to distinguish different instances of a recurring iCal event?

I'm using a Rails backend (and the IceCube::Schedule gem) and pulling events from Google Calendar.

But in a recurring event (series), one instance of the series is edited and they both have the same iCal_id and values.

Answer 1

You may want to try Calendar Provider API. With this API, CalendarContract.Instances table holds the start and end time for each occurrence of an event. And for recurring events, multiple rows are automatically generated that correspond to multiple occurrences of that event.

In Querying the Instances table, you just need to specify a range time for the query in the URI.

Try to play around with the given example in the documentation and see if it will help you. Otherwise, see this GitHub post which mentioned about using a wrapper for ical.js that also handles api call to get all recurring occurrences between two dates.

Answer 2

When a vevent is modified, a SEQUENCE number is supposed to be generated to indicate the latest version of an event or series.

If an instance within a recurring event series is modified, then the original UID, the RECURRENCE-ID (date of instance being modified) and the SEQUENCE should be available to identify the latest of the specific instance.