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

Four years later and understanding ICS format a bit better, if those were the only fields I needed, I'd just use the native string methods:

import io

# Probably not a valid .ics file, but we don't really care for the example
# it works fine regardless
file = io.StringIO('''
BEGIN:VCALENDAR
X-LOTUS-CHARSET:UTF-8
VERSION:2.0
DESCRIPTION:Emails\nDarlene\n Murphy\nDr. Ferri\n

SUMMARY:smart energy management
LOCATION:8778/92050462
DTSTART;TZID="India":20100629T110000
DTEND;TZID="India":20100629T120000
TRANSP:OPAQUE
DTSTAMP:20100713T071037Z
CLASS:PUBLIC
SUMMARY:meeting
UID:6011DDDD659E49D765257751001D2B4B-Lotus_Notes_Generated
X-LOTUS-UPDATE-SEQ:1
X-LOTUS-UPDATE-WISL:$S:1;$L:1;$B:1;$R:1;$E:1;$W:1;$O:1;$M:1
X-LOTUS-NOTESVERSION:2
X-LOTUS-APPTTYPE:0
X-LOTUS-CHILD_UID:6011DDDD659E49D765257751001D2B4B
END:VEVENT
'''.strip())

parsing = False
for line in file:
    field, _, data = line.partition(':')
    if field in ('SUMMARY', 'DESCRIPTION', 'DTSTAMP'):
        parsing = True
        print(field)
        print('\t'+'\n\t'.join(data.split('\n')))
    elif parsing and not data:
        print('\t'+'\n\t'.join(field.split('\n')))
    else:
        parsing = False

Storing the data and parsing the datetime is left as an exercise for the reader (it's always UTC)

old answer below

---

You could use a regex:

import re
text = #your text
print(re.search("SUMMARY:.*?:", text, re.DOTALL).group())
print(re.search("DESCRIPTION:.*?:", text, re.DOTALL).group())
print(re.search("DTSTAMP:.*:?", text, re.DOTALL).group())

I'm sure it may be possible to skip the first and last words, I'm just not sure how to do it with regex. You could do it this way though:

print(' '.join(re.search("SUMMARY:.*?:", text, re.DOTALL).group().replace(':', ' ').split()[1:-1])