Parsing files (ics/ icalendar) using Python

Question

I have a .ics file in the following format. What is the best way to parse it? I need to retrieve the Summary, Description, and Time for each of the entries.

Answer 1

You could probably also use the vobject module for this: http://pypi.python.org/pypi/vobject

If you have a sample.ics file you can read it's contents like, so:

# read the data from the file
data = open("sample.ics").read()

# parse the top-level event with vobject
cal = vobject.readOne(data)

# Get Summary
print 'Summary: ', cal.vevent.summary.valueRepr()
# Get Description
print 'Description: ', cal.vevent.description.valueRepr()

# Get Time
print 'Time (as a datetime object): ', cal.vevent.dtstart.value
print 'Time (as a string): ', cal.vevent.dtstart.valueRepr()