How can I use PHP to dynamically publish an ical file to be read by Google Calendar?

Question

Any Google search on PHP ical just brings up phpicalendar and how to parse or read IN ical files. I just want to write a PHP file that pulls events from my database and writ

Answer 1

This should be very simple if Google Calendar does not require the *.ics-extension (which will require some URL rewriting in the server).

$ical = "BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
PRODID:-//hacksw/handcal//NONSGML v1.0//EN
BEGIN:VEVENT
UID:" . md5(uniqid(mt_rand(), true)) . "@yourhost.test
DTSTAMP:" . gmdate('Ymd').'T'. gmdate('His') . "Z
DTSTART:19970714T170000Z
DTEND:19970715T035959Z
SUMMARY:Bastille Day Party
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR";

//set correct content-type-header
header('Content-type: text/calendar; charset=utf-8');
header('Content-Disposition: inline; filename=calendar.ics');
echo $ical;
exit;

That's essentially all you need to make a client think that you're serving a iCalendar file, even though there might be some issues regarding caching, text encoding and so on. But you can start experimenting with this simple code.