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I have a website that stores and displays data about events. I'd like to make that data available to Google Calendar users and allow them to subscribe to my site's event data. The event data can and does change occasionally, so having user's import an iCal file to their own Google Calendar is not ideal.

1) Is this possible?

2) Can I keep all of the data on my site, via url, and allow google calendar users to subscribe?

3) Do I need to put my event data "into Google" somehow, and then allow google calendar users to subscribe to that data? If so, I'll need to keep event data on my site and the data "in google" in sync, correct?

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2 Answers

up vote 3 down vote accepted

If you publish an iCal/xCal file to your website then your users can subscribe to this using Google Calendar. In the Calendar UI its under Settings->Browse Interesting Calendars->Add by URL.

This causes Google to internally create a new Google calendar and arrange for it be populated with new events from your feed regularly (at least once every 24 hours). To add new events you simply upload/publish a new version of your calendar file.

If its a bit much to ask your users to follow this method, then you can publish a "subscribe to calendar" link or button on your website. The link should be:


Or for Apps:


Google used to have this information in a support document but I can't find it anymore :( I can verify that this method works well - we publish personalized feeds for 150K users right now.

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As long as your calendar is public, you can go to the calendar settings and copy the "Calendar Address" that it provides in XML, ICAL, and HTML format and post that somewhere on your site. Users should be able to use that URL directly inside Google Calendar to import yours into their interface.

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Is that a one time import, or if the XML/ICAL/HTML data changes, will that update calendars for users that linked to this page? –  slolife Jun 30 '10 at 23:02
Once imported, if you update your calendar it will update for them as well. The link is actually used to add your calendar as an "Other Calendar" to their Google calendar interface as if you had directly shared the calendar to them. –  Brad Gardner Jun 30 '10 at 23:08
This is correct, but it does require the data to exist as a google calendar -- either via some sort of sync or via direct input. –  Adam Tuttle Jul 1 '10 at 1:15
whoops! I must have missed the part where the slolife didn't mention already using Google Calendar. Adam is right, Google calendar would be needed on both ends of this for it to work that way. –  Brad Gardner Jul 1 '10 at 12:26
So, since my data needs to exist in a google calendar, I'll need a google account for my site, and I'll need to keep the event data in the google calendar in sync with the data on my site. –  slolife Jul 1 '10 at 17:01
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