Exchange server Calendar folder analysis (Was: Synching diary with an exchange server?)

[Steinar Bang <sb@dod.no>]

>>>>> Steinar Bang <sb@dod.no>:

> Is there eg. something that can take an iCalendar export from the emacs
> diary, and can use it to update my Exchange calendar?

That I still don't know the answer to, but I've been told that the
Calendar is just a folder on the server.

So I browsed the Exchange nnimap server today, from the server buffer,
and found a folder at the top, named Calendar.

I subscribed to this folder, and visited it, and in it where messages
with the following headers:

Content-Type: multipart/mixed;
	boundary="----_=_NextPart_001_01C8CAD5.5F6B4710"
Content-class: urn:content-classes:appointment

The Content-class is something Microsoft'ish, not MIME, but I'm guessing
it has to be there for the messages to work.

Then there is either just a text part or a multipart/alternative with a
text/plan and an HTML part.

Then there is a part (at the top level) with headers like this.

Content-class: urn:content-classes:appointment
Content-Type: text/calendar;
	charset="UTF-8";
	method=REQUEST
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

The content in there looks to be in the vCalendar format.

What's in there, are all invites, whether I've responded to them, or
not.  So I guess to mark a meeting as accepted, the contents of the
calendar part has to be modified...?

Only it's not possible to modify messages with IMAP.  The only way would
be to download the message, modify it, delete the original message, and
upload the modified message.

This will result in the modified calendar entry having a different
server message id than the original calendar entry.  I don't know if
that would break some magic, or not...?

But if this is all that needs doing to get a working calendar
synchronization, it's strange that no work has been done to accomplish
it.  At least none that a quick google and gmane search can find.

I found this thread on gmane, but it's pretty old:
	http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.gnus.general/33977

Appearently then, the vCalendar payload wasn't accessable from the
message.  It seems to be now.

It did mention some iCalendar or vCalendar stuff that was introduced
into Gnus at about that time (2001), but not what it was about.
Grepping for iCalendar or vCalendar in the .el files in the current CVS
Gnus, gives no matches.

Does anyone know if there are any obvious showstoppers with accessing
the Calendar folder using IMAP?  To maybe create something like nndiary
that would create articles in the required form, and store them in that
particular nnimap folder?

Thanx!


- Steinar