The Google Calendar (ICS) Data Source

Put a calendar on the page as a table. Point this source at a public ICS address and the events become rows - filtered by date, narrowed by keyword, limited in number, and showing exactly the columns you choose.

When to use it

Choose Google Calendar (ICS) for anything already kept in a calendar: a programme of events, training dates, match fixtures, a timetable, holidays. ICS is the standard calendar format, so this works with Google Calendar and with anything else that publishes one.

The calendar must be public. Tabulizer is not signed in. In Google Calendar, open the calendar's settings, make it public, and copy the Public address in iCal format - the link ending in basic.ics. A private address works only as long as it stays secret, so treat it as one.

This source produces a table of events. For a month grid, an agenda or a timeline, use the online calendar wizard instead - that is what it is for.

The form

Components › Tabulizer › Data Sources › New Data Source, then set Source Type to Google Calendar (ICS).

Field	Required	What it does
Public Calendar ICS URL	Yes	The public iCal address of the calendar.
Start Date	No	Ignore everything that finishes before this date. Leave blank for no lower bound.
End Date	No	Ignore everything that starts after this date. Leave blank for no upper bound.
Maximum Events	No	How many events to show at most. Defaults to 20, and anything below 1 is treated as 20.
Sort Order	No	Ascending (oldest first) or Descending (newest first), by start date and time.
Keyword Filter	No	Comma-separated words; only matching events are kept. Blank keeps everything.
Fields to Include	No	Which event details become columns. Eight are ticked to begin with.
Empty results message	No	What to show when nothing matches - which, for "this week's events", is a normal state.

There is no Server Side switch on this form, and that is deliberate: a calendar is always read from a remote address, and the setting would have nothing to page through.

Choosing the events

Four fields narrow a calendar of hundreds down to the handful a page should show, and they are applied in this order.

The date range

An event is kept if it overlaps the range, not only if it starts inside it - so a conference running from the 28th to the 2nd still appears in a range beginning on the 1st. Leave either end blank for an open-ended range.

The keywords

Each word is looked for in the event's title, description, location and category, ignoring case. An event is kept if it matches any of them - so webinar, workshop means "either", not "both".

The sort

What survives is ordered by start date and time, oldest or newest first.

The limit

Finally the list is cut to Maximum Events. Because this happens last, Ascending plus a limit of 5 gives the five earliest matching events - the usual "next five" list.

A fixed Start Date ages. There is no "from today" setting here, so a hard date that made sense in January quietly becomes a list of history by June. For a forward-looking list, leave Start Date blank and rely on the calendar holding mostly future events, or review the date when you review the page.

Fields to Include

Fourteen tick boxes decide the columns. Eight are ticked to begin with: Title, Location, Start Date, Start Time, End Date, End Time, Description, Link.

Field	What it holds
Title	The event's name.
Location	Where it is, as typed in the calendar.
Start Date / Start Time	Separate columns, so each can be formatted and sorted on its own.
End Date / End Time	The same for the end.
Description	The event's notes. Often long - think before putting it in a narrow table.
Link	The address of the event.
Author	Who organised it.
Updated	When the entry was last changed.
All Day	Whether it is an all-day event.
Event Id	The calendar's own identifier - useful for matching rows against another system, meaningless to a visitor.
Category	The event's category, where the calendar sets one.
Source	Where the entry came from.

The columns follow the order of the boxes on screen, not the order you tick them. Title comes first, then Location, then Start Date, and so on down the list. Plan the ruleset's headings in that order - or untick everything and tick only what you need, which makes the order easy to read off the form.

An event that has nothing for one of the chosen fields - no location, no description - gets an empty cell, so the table stays rectangular.

What the table contains

Behaviour	Detail
One row per event	After filtering, sorting and the limit.
Dates and times are separate columns	Dates as `YYYY-MM-DD`, times as `HH:MM:SS` - both sort correctly as text, which is what makes them easy to work with in a ruleset.
No header row	The field names are not carried into the table. Use a ruleset with a header size of 0, or one that supplies its own headings.
A repeating event	Appears as the calendar publishes it. Check against the calendar before promising a visitor that every occurrence is listed.

Building one

Make the calendar public and copy the ICS address

Open it in your own browser first: you should get a download or a wall of BEGIN:VEVENT text.

Start wide

No dates, no keywords, 20 events. Save and preview - you will see what the calendar actually contains.

Narrow it

Untick the fields you do not want, add keywords if the calendar holds more than this page needs, and set the limit.

Turn the cache on

A calendar changes a few times a week, not a few times a second. An hour is generous.

Common questions

The table is empty.

In order: is the calendar public; is the address the iCal one; does the date range exclude everything; do the keywords match anything. Clear the dates and keywords and preview again - that isolates it in one step.

It will not load at all.

The server is not allowed to make outgoing requests, or the calendar is not public. Check the cURL library on the Status page, and open the address in your own browser.

Only 20 events appear.

That is the default. Raise Maximum Events.

The columns are in the wrong order.

They follow the order of the tick boxes, not the order you ticked them. Rearrange the headings in the ruleset to match.

My keyword filter removes too much.

Each term must appear somewhere in the title, description, location or category. A term with a typo matches nothing; an event matches if any term is found.

Can I show only future events?

Not automatically. Leave Start Date blank and sort ascending, or set a date and revisit it.

The times look wrong by an hour or two.

Times come from the calendar as published. Check the calendar's own time zone before changing anything here.

Can I read a private calendar?

Only through its secret address, and that address grants access to anyone who learns it. Make the calendar public instead, or keep the private detail off it.

Build a calendar data source

In your Joomla administrator: Components › Tabulizer › Data Sources › New Data Source.

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