Network Working Group M. Douglass Internet-Draft RPI Intended status: Standards Track September 27, 2012 Expires: March 31, 2013 Event Publishing Extensions to Icalendar draft-douglass-calendar-extension-01 Abstract This specification introduces a number of new iCalendar properties which are of particular use for event publishers and in social networking. Status of this Memo This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79. Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet- Drafts is at http://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/. Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as "work in progress." This Internet-Draft will expire on March 31, 2013. Copyright Notice Copyright (c) 2012 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the document authors. All rights reserved. This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document. Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as described in the Simplified BSD License. Douglass Expires March 31, 2013 [Page 1] Internet-Draft Event Publishing Extensions to Icalendar September 2012 Table of Contents 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 1.1. Conventions Used in This Document . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 2. Typed References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 3. Use Cases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 3.1. Piano Concert Performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 3.2. Itineraries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 4. New Property Parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 4.1. Hash . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 4.2. Idh . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 4.3. Idref . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 4.4. Loctype . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 4.5. Parttype . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 4.6. Order . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 4.7. Title . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 5. New Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 5.1. Participant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 5.2. Styled-Description . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 5.3. Structured-Location . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 6. Participant Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 7. Extended examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 7.1. Example 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 8. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 9. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 9.1. Property Registrations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 9.2. Parameter Registrations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 9.3. Participant Type Registrations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 10. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 11. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Appendix A. Change log . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Douglass Expires March 31, 2013 [Page 2] Internet-Draft Event Publishing Extensions to Icalendar September 2012 1. Introduction The currently existing iCalendar standard [RFC5545] lacks useful methods for referencing additional, external information relating to calendar components. This document defines a number of properties referencing external information that can provide additional information about an iCalendar component. The intent is that such information can be automatically discovered and used by clients. Formats such as VCARD are likely to be most useful. In addition a new property is defined to support HTML descriptions. 1.1. Conventions Used in This Document The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in [RFC2119]. 2. Typed References The properties defined here can all reference external meta-data which may be used by applications to provide enhanced value to users. By providing type information as parameters, clients and servers are able to discover interesting references and make use of them, perhaps for indexing or the presentation of additional related information for the user. These properties are designed to handle common use cases in event publication. It is generally important to provide information about the organizers of such events. Sponsors wish to be referenced in a prominent manner. In social calendaring it is often important to identify the active participants in the event, for example a school sports team, and the inactive participants, for example the parents. The [RFC5545] LOCATION property provides only an unstructured single text value for specifying the location where an event (or "TODO" item) will occur. This is inadequate for use cases where structured location information (e.g. address, region, country, postal code) is required or preferred, and limits widespread adoption of iCalendar in those settings. Using STRUCTURED-LOCATION, information about a number of interesting locations can be communicated, for example, parking, restaurants and the venue. Servers and clients can retrieve the objects when storing Douglass Expires March 31, 2013 [Page 3] Internet-Draft Event Publishing Extensions to Icalendar September 2012 the event and use them to index by geographic location. When a calendar client receives a calendar component it can search the set of supplied properties looking for those of particular interest. The TYPE and FMTTYPE parameters, if supplied, can be used to help the selection. Having located such a property, e.g. STRUCTURED-LOCATION with TYPE=PARKING, the client can use http GET on the supplied URL perhaps with an ACCEPT header set to specify the desired format. The targeted server SHOULD respond with a 406 if the resource is not available in the desired format(s). 3. Use Cases The main motivation for these properties has been event publication but there are opportunities for use elsewhere. The following use cases will describe some possible scenarios. 3.1. Piano Concert Performance In putting together a concert there are many participants: piano tuner, performer, stage hands etc. In addition there are sponsors and various contacts to be provided. There will also be a number of related locations. A number of events can be created, all of which relate to the performance in different ways. There may be an iTip meeting request for the piano tuner who will arrive before the performance. Other members of staff may also receive meeting requests. An event can also be created for publication which will have a PARTICIPANT reference to the pianist providing vcard information about the performer. This event would also hold information about parking, local subway stations and the venue itself. In addition, there will be sponsorship information for sponsors of the event and perhaps paid sponsorship properties essentially advertising local establishments. 3.2. Itineraries These properties also provide opportunities for the travel industry. When booking a flight the SPONSOR property can be used to provide references to businesses at the airports and to car hire businesses at the destination. The embedded location information can guide the traveller at the Douglass Expires March 31, 2013 [Page 4] Internet-Draft Event Publishing Extensions to Icalendar September 2012 airport or to their final destination. The contact information can provide detailed information about the booking agent, the airlines and car hire companies and the hotel. 4. New Property Parameters 4.1. Hash Parameter name: HASH Purpose: To specify a hash of the value of another property. Format Definition: This parameter is defined by the following notation: hashparam = "HASH" "=" DQUOTE text "/" text DQUOTE Description: This parameter can be specified on properties that are variants of another property and is used to detect changes in that property to enable the values of all variants to be kept synchronized. Each property that uses the "HASH" parameter MUST define which other property the "HASH" is calculated from. The text value should be the hash value (encoded as a hexadecimal string) followed by a single "/", followed by a token describing the algorithm used to calculate the hash value. Algorithm names from the IANA Hash Function Textual Names registry [] MUST be used. Example: STYLED-DESCRIPTION;HASH="699EAEE6CDB049F8B E9E3329AAC2415A/SHA-1":Some Text 4.2. Idh Parameter name: ID Purpose: To uniquely identify a property. Format Definition: This parameter is defined by the following notation: idparam = "ID" "=" param-value Douglass Expires March 31, 2013 [Page 5] Internet-Draft Event Publishing Extensions to Icalendar September 2012 Description: This parameter can be specified on any property. It is used to uniquely identify the property so it can be related to other properties that specify an "IDREF" parameter whose value matches the "ID" value. Properties within the same component MUST NOT have an "ID" parameter with the same value. Example: DESCRIPTION;ID=2:Some Text STYLED-DESCRIPTION;ID=3;IDREF=2:Other Text 4.3. Idref Parameter name: IDREF Purpose: To relate one property to another. Format Definition: This parameter is defined by the following notation: idrefparam = "IDREF" "=" param-value ; ??? multi-valued Description: This parameter can be specified on any property. It is used to uniquely relate one property to another. The value of the "IDREF" parameter is set to the value of the "ID" parameter on the property to which it is being related. Example: DESCRIPTION;ID=2:Some Text STYLED-DESCRIPTION;IDREF=2:Other Text 4.4. Loctype Parameter name: TYPE Purpose: To specify the type of location. Format Definition: This parameter is defined by the following notation: loctypeparam = "LOCTYPE" "=" text Douglass Expires March 31, 2013 [Page 6] Internet-Draft Event Publishing Extensions to Icalendar September 2012 Description: This parameter MAY be specified on STRUCTURED-LOCATION and provides a way to differentiate multiple properties. For example, it allows event producers to provide location information for the venue and the parking. Values for this parameter are taken from the values defined in [RFC5545]. New location types SHOULD be registered in the manner laid down in that specification 4.5. Parttype Parameter name: PARTTYPE Purpose: To specify the type of participant. Format Definition: This parameter is defined by the following notation: parttypeparam = "PARTTYPE" "=" text Description: This parameter MAY be specified on the PARTICIPANT property, and defines the type of participation. Allowable values are defined in Section 6. 4.6. Order Parameter name: ORDER Purpose: To define ordering for the associated property. Format Definition: This parameter is defined by the following notation: orderparam = "ORDER" "=" (1*2DIGIT / "10") ; An integer between 1 and 100. Description: The ORDER parameter is OPTIONAL and is used to indicate the relative ordering of the corresponding instance of a property. Its value MUST be an integer between 1 and 100 that quantifies the order. Lower values correspond to a higher level of ordering, with 1 being the highest. When the parameter is absent, the default MUST be to interpret the property instance as being at the lowest level of ordering. Douglass Expires March 31, 2013 [Page 7] Internet-Draft Event Publishing Extensions to Icalendar September 2012 Note that the value of this parameter is to be interpreted only in relation to values assigned to other correcsponding instances of the same property in the same entity. A given value, or the absence of a value, MUST NOT be interpreted on its own. This parameter MAY be applied to any property that allows multiple instances. 4.7. Title Parameter name: TITLE Purpose: To provide a human readable title. Format Definition: This parameter is defined by the following notation: titleparam = "TITLE" "=" text Description: This parameter MAY be specified on all properties defined in this specification, and provides a human readable label, perhaps for icons or links.. 5. New Properties 5.1. Participant Property name: PARTICIPANT Purpose: This property provides a typed reference to external information about participants in an event or optionally a plain text typed value. Value type: The default value type for this property is URI. The value type can also be set to TEXT to indicate plain text content. Property Parameters: Non-standard, title, type or format type parameters can be specified on this property. Conformance: This property MAY be specified in any iCalendar component. Description: When used in a component the value of this property points to information about an event participant. This is NOT an attendee in a scheduling sense and the ATTENDEE property may in fact be specified in addition. Participants in events can be Douglass Expires March 31, 2013 [Page 8] Internet-Draft Event Publishing Extensions to Icalendar September 2012 individuals or organizations, for example a soccer team, the spectators, or the musicians. Format Definition: This property is defined by the following notation: participant = "PARTICIPANT" partparam (":" uri) / ( ";" "VALUE" "=" "TEXT" ":" text ) CRLF partparam = *( ; the following are OPTIONAL ; but MUST NOT occur more than once (";" fmttypeparam) / (";" titleparam) / (";" orderparam) / (";" parttypeparam) / ; the following is OPTIONAL ; and MAY occur more than once (";" other-param) ) Note: When the ORDER parameter is supplied it defines the ordering of PARTICIPANT properties with the same value for the TYPE parameter. Example: The following is an example of this property. It points to a VCARD providing information on an event participant. PARTICIPANT;TYPE=PRINCIPAL_PERFORMER: http://dir.example.com/vcard/aviolinist.vcf Douglass Expires March 31, 2013 [Page 9] Internet-Draft Event Publishing Extensions to Icalendar September 2012 Example: The following is an example referring to a VCARD providing information on the primary contact. PARTICIPANT;FMTTYPE=text/vcard;TYPE=PRIMARY-CONTACT; TITLE=A contact: http://dir.example.com/vcard/contacts/contact1.vcf Example: The following is an example of the property used to link to VCARD information on the event planner. STRUCTURED-CONTACT;FMTTYPE=text/vcard; TYPE=PLANNER-CONTACT;TITLE=ClownsIsUs: http://dir.example.com/vcard/clowns-is-us.vcf 5.2. Styled-Description Property name: STYLED-DESCRIPTION Purpose: This property provides a more complete description of the calendar component than that provided by the "SUMMARY" property. Value type: The default value type for this property is TEXT. The value type can also be set to URI. Other text-based value types can be used when defined in the future. Clients MUST ignore any properties with value types they do not understand. Property Parameters: IANA, non-standard, alternate text representation, and language property parameters can be specified on this property. Conformance: The property can be specified multiple times in the "VEVENT", "VTODO", "VJOURNAL", or "VALARM" calendar components. Description: This property is used in the "VEVENT" and "VTODO" to capture lengthy textual descriptions associated with the activity. This property is used in the "VJOURNAL" calendar component to capture one or more textual journal entries. This property is used in the "VALARM" calendar component to capture the display text for a DISPLAY category of alarm, and to capture the body text for an EMAIL category of alarm. Douglass Expires March 31, 2013 [Page 10] Internet-Draft Event Publishing Extensions to Icalendar September 2012 VALUE=TEXT is used to provide html variants of the plain-text DESCRIPTION property. VALUE=URI is used to provide a link to html content which is expected to be displayed inline as part of the event. The "HASH" parameter value is calculated from the value of any "DESCRIPTION" property present in the same component. If no "DESCRIPTION" is present, then the "HASH" parameter MUST NOT be present. The intent of this property is limited to providing a styled version of the DESCRIPTION property. The URL property should be used to link to websites or other related information. Format Definition: This property is defined by the following notation: styleddescription = "STYLED-DESCRIPTION" styleddescparam ":" text CRLF styleddescparam = *( ; ; The following are OPTIONAL, ; but MUST NOT occur more than once. ; (";" altrepparam) / (";" languageparam) / (";" hashparam) / (";" idparam) / (";" idrefparam) / ; ; The following is OPTIONAL, ; and MAY occur more than once. ; (";" valueparam) ; The value of this parameter MUST match the type of ; data supplied in the value of the property Example: The following is an example of this property. It points to a venue. STRUCTURED-LOCATION;TITLE="The venue": http://dir.example.com/venues/big-hall.vcf Douglass Expires March 31, 2013 [Page 11] Internet-Draft Event Publishing Extensions to Icalendar September 2012 5.3. Structured-Location Property name: STRUCTURED-LOCATION Purpose: This property provides a typed reference to external information about the location of an event or optionally a plain text typed value. Value type: The default value type for this property is URI. The value type can also be set to TEXT to indicate plain text content. Property Parameters: Non-standard, title, type or format type parameters can be specified on this property. Conformance: This property MAY be specified zero or more times in any iCalendar component. Description: When used in a component the value of this property provides information about the event venue or of related services such as parking, dining, stations etc.. Format Definition: This property is defined by the following notation: extloc = "STRUCTURED-LOCATION" extlocparam (":" uri) / ( ";" "VALUE" "=" "TEXT" ":" text ) CRLF extlocparam = *( ; the following are OPTIONAL ; but MUST NOT occur more than once (";" fmttypeparam) / (";" titleparam) / (";" loctypeparam) / ; the following is OPTIONAL ; and MAY occur more than once (";" other-param) ) Douglass Expires March 31, 2013 [Page 12] Internet-Draft Event Publishing Extensions to Icalendar September 2012 Example: The following is an example of this property. It points to a venue. STRUCTURED-LOCATION;TITLE="The venue": http://dir.example.com/venues/big-hall.vcf 6. Participant Types This section describes types of participation and provide registered values for the PARTICPANT property TYPE parameter. ACTIVE: A participant taking an active role - for example a team member. INACTIVE: A particpant taking an inactive part - for example an audience member. SPONSOR: A sponsor of the event. The ORDER parameter may be used with this participant type to define the relative order of multiple sponsors. CONTACT: Contact information for the event. The ORDER parameter may be used with this participant type to define the relative order of multiple contacts. BOOKING-CONTACT: Contact information for reservations or payment EMERGENCY-CONTACT: Contact in case of emergency PUBLICITY-CONTACT: Contact for publicity PLANNER-CONTACT: Contact for the event planner or organizer PERFORMER: A performer - for example the soloist or the accompianist. The ORDER parameter may be used with this participant type to define the relative order of multiple sponsors. For example,ORDER=1 could define the principal performer or soloist. 7. Extended examples The following are some examples of the use of the properties defined in this specification. They include additional properties defined in [I-D.daboo-icalendar-extensions] which includes IMAGE and LIVEFEED. Douglass Expires March 31, 2013 [Page 13] Internet-Draft Event Publishing Extensions to Icalendar September 2012 7.1. Example 1 The following is an example of a VEVENT describing a concert. It includes location information for the venue itself as well as references to parking and restaurants. There is also an available live feed which allows clients to prompt the user as the time for the concert approaches. BEGIN:VEVENT CREATED:20101116T145739Z DESCRIPTION: Piano Sonata No 3\n Piano Sonata No 30 DTSTAMP:20101116T145739Z DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20110315T150000Z DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20110315T163000Z LAST-MODIFIED:20101116T145739Z SUMMARY:Beethoven Piano Sonatas UID:123456 STRUCTURED-LOCATION;TITLE="The venue": http://dir.example.com/venues/big-hall.vcf STRUCTURED-LOCATION;TITLE="The venue": http://dir.example.com/venues/parking.vcf PARTICIPANT;TYPE=SPONSOR:http://example.com/sponsor.vcf LIVEFEED:http://www.examplebroadcasting.net/big-hall.pls PARTICIPANT;TYPE=PERFORMER: http://www.example.com/people/johndoe.vcf END:VEVENT 8. Security Considerations Applications using these property need to be aware of the risks entailed in using the URIs provided as values. See [RFC3986] for a discussion of the security considerations relating to URIs. 9. IANA Considerations 9.1. Property Registrations This document defines the following new iCalendar properties to be added to the registry defined in Section 8.2.3 of [RFC5545]: Douglass Expires March 31, 2013 [Page 14] Internet-Draft Event Publishing Extensions to Icalendar September 2012 +---------------------+---------+----------------------+ | Property | Status | Reference | +---------------------+---------+----------------------+ | PARTICIPANT | Current | RFCXXXX, Section 5.1 | | STRUCTURED-LOCATION | Current | RFCXXXX, Section 5.3 | +---------------------+---------+----------------------+ 9.2. Parameter Registrations This document defines the following new iCalendar property parameters to be added to the registry defined in Section 8.2.4 of [RFC5545]: +--------------------+---------+----------------------+ | Property Parameter | Status | Reference | +--------------------+---------+----------------------+ | LEVEL | Current | RFCXXXX, Section 4.6 | | LOCTYPE | Current | RFCXXXX, Section 4.4 | | PARTTYPE | Current | RFCXXXX, Section 4.5 | | TITLE | Current | RFCXXXX, Section 4.7 | +--------------------+---------+----------------------+ 9.3. Participant Type Registrations The following table has been used to initialize the participant types registry. +-------------------+---------+--------------------+ | Participant Type | Status | Reference | +-------------------+---------+--------------------+ | ACTIVE | Current | RFCXXXX, Section 6 | | INACTIVE | Current | RFCXXXX, Section 6 | | SPONSOR | Current | RFCXXXX, Section 6 | | CONTACT | Current | RFCXXXX, Section 6 | | BOOKING-CONTACT | Current | RFCXXXX, Section 6 | | EMERGENCY-CONTACT | Current | RFCXXXX, Section 6 | | PUBLICITY-CONTACT | Current | RFCXXXX, Section 6 | | PLANNER-CONTACT | Current | RFCXXXX, Section 6 | | PERFORMER | Current | RFCXXXX, Section 6 | +-------------------+---------+--------------------+ 10. Acknowledgements The author would like to thank Chuck Norris of eventful.com for his work which led to the development of this RFC. The author would also like to thank the members of the Calendaring and Scheduling Consortium Event Publication technical committee and Douglass Expires March 31, 2013 [Page 15] Internet-Draft Event Publishing Extensions to Icalendar September 2012 the following individuals for contributing their ideas and support: Cyrus Daboo, Dan Mendell The authors would also like to thank the Calendaring and Scheduling Consortium for advice with this specification. 11. Normative References [I-D.daboo-icalendar-extensions] Daboo, C., "New Properties for iCalendar", draft-daboo-icalendar-extensions-05 (work in progress), June 2012. [RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997. [RFC2434] Narten, T. and H. Alvestrand, "Guidelines for Writing an IANA Considerations Section in RFCs", BCP 26, RFC 2434, October 1998. [RFC3688] Mealling, M., "The IETF XML Registry", BCP 81, RFC 3688, January 2004. [RFC3986] Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R., and L. Masinter, "Uniform Resource Identifier (URI): Generic Syntax", STD 66, RFC 3986, January 2005. [RFC4589] Schulzrinne, H. and H. Tschofenig, "Location Types Registry", RFC 4589, July 2006. [RFC5545] Desruisseaux, B., "Internet Calendaring and Scheduling Core Object Specification (iCalendar)", RFC 5545, September 2009. [W3C.REC-xml-20060816] Yergeau, F., Paoli, J., Bray, T., Sperberg-McQueen, C., and E. Maler, "Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0 (Fourth Edition)", World Wide Web Consortium FirstEdition REC-xml-20060816, August 2006, . Appendix A. Change log v00 2007-10-19 MD Initial version Douglass Expires March 31, 2013 [Page 16] Internet-Draft Event Publishing Extensions to Icalendar September 2012 2011-01-07 o Remove MEDIA - it's going in the Cyrus RFC o Rename EXTENDED-... to STRUCTURED-... o Add TYPE parameter to SPONSOR Author's Address Michael Douglass Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute 110 8th Street Troy, NY 12180 USA Email: douglm@rpi.edu URI: http://www.rpi.edu/ Douglass Expires March 31, 2013 [Page 17]