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Tickets Please

Calendar Subscription & Export

Calendar Subscription & Export

Visitors who find an event on your site often want to add it to their personal calendar. Tickets Please generates iCal feeds and single-event exports that work with Google Calendar, Outlook, Apple Calendar, and any app that supports the iCalendar standard.

iCal Feeds

Tickets Please publishes live iCal feeds that calendar apps can subscribe to. When you add, update, or remove events, subscribers see the changes automatically the next time their app refreshes.

Three feed URLs are available:

FeedURL
All events/events/ical/
Single event/event/{slug}/ical/
Category events/events/category/{slug}/ical/

The all-events feed at /events/ical/ includes every published event on your site. The category feed narrows results to events in a specific category, so visitors can subscribe only to the types of events they care about.

Single Event Export

Each event page includes a downloadable .ics file at /event/{slug}/ical/. Clicking the download link saves a single-event file that the visitor can import into any calendar app. Unlike feed subscriptions, a downloaded .ics file is a one-time snapshot and does not update if you change the event later.

Every single event page displays subscribe links for the three major calendar platforms:

Google Calendar — opens Google Calendar’s event creation form pre-filled with the event details. The link format is:

https://calendar.google.com/calendar/render?action=TEMPLATE&text={title}&dates={start}/{end}&details={description}&location={venue}&sprop=website:{url}

Outlook.com — opens Outlook’s compose screen with event details pre-populated. The link format is:

https://outlook.live.com/calendar/0/deeplink/compose?subject={title}&startdt={start}&enddt={end}&body={description}&location={venue}

Apple Calendar / iCal — a direct link to the .ics file download. When clicked on macOS or iOS, the system prompts the visitor to add the event to Apple Calendar.

All three links appear together, typically as icons or text links, in the event details section on the single event page.

iCalendar Format Details

Tickets Please generates standard VCALENDAR/VEVENT data that conforms to RFC 5545. Each event export includes:

FieldiCal PropertySource
Event titleSUMMARYPost title
Start date/timeDTSTARTEvent start meta
End date/timeDTENDEvent end meta
DescriptionDESCRIPTIONEvent excerpt or content (plain text)
LocationLOCATIONVenue name and address
Event URLURLPermalink
Unique IDUIDGenerated per event

The PRODID is set to Tickets Please, identifying the source application in the iCal file header.

All-day events use DTSTART;VALUE=DATE format (date only, no time component), which calendar apps interpret correctly as spanning the full day.

Setting Up Calendar Subscriptions

To help visitors subscribe to your full event calendar:

  1. Link to /events/ical/ from your events page, sidebar widget, or footer. Label it clearly, such as “Subscribe to our calendar.”
  2. Visitors copy the URL and paste it into their calendar app’s “subscribe” or “add by URL” feature.
  3. The calendar app polls the feed periodically (usually every few hours) and pulls in new or updated events.

For category-specific subscriptions, link to /events/category/{slug}/ical/ and label it accordingly (e.g., “Subscribe to Workshops”).

Google Calendar Subscription Steps

For visitors unfamiliar with calendar subscriptions, you can link to these steps:

  1. Open Google Calendar.
  2. Click the + next to “Other calendars” in the left sidebar.
  3. Select From URL.
  4. Paste the iCal feed URL (e.g., yoursite.com/events/ical/).
  5. Click Add calendar.

Events appear within a few minutes and update automatically.

Common Questions

How often do calendar apps refresh the feed? It depends on the app. Google Calendar checks roughly every 12-24 hours. Apple Calendar and Outlook refresh every 15 minutes to a few hours. You cannot control the refresh interval from your site.

Can I export all events as a single downloadable file? Yes. The /events/ical/ URL works both as a subscription feed and as a one-time download. Link to it with a download attribute or instruct visitors to save the file.

Do exported events include ticket information? The DESCRIPTION field contains the event excerpt or a plain-text version of the content. Ticket prices and availability are not included in the iCal data. The URL field links back to the event page where visitors can see ticket details.

Can I customize what appears in the iCal export? Use the tickets_please_ical_event_data filter to modify the array of iCal properties before they are rendered. You can add custom fields, change the description format, or exclude specific events.

Do recurring events export correctly? Each occurrence of a recurring event exports as a separate VEVENT with its own DTSTART, DTEND, and UID. Calendar apps display them as individual events. The single-event .ics download exports only the specific occurrence, not the entire series.

Is the feed publicly accessible? Yes. The iCal feed URLs are public and do not require authentication. Anyone with the URL can subscribe. If you need to restrict access, use a plugin that adds authentication to specific URL patterns.

Next Steps