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NAME

DateTime::TimeZone::ICal - iCal VTIMEZONE entry to DateTime::TimeZone

VERSION

Version 0.04

SYNOPSIS

    use Data::ICal;
    use DateTime::Format::ICal;
    use DateTime::TimeZone::ICal;

    my $ical = Data::ICal->new(filename => 'foo.ics');

    # generate a table of time zones
    my (%tz, @events);
    for my $entry (@{$ical->entries}) {
        my $type = $entry->ical_entry_type;
        if ($type eq 'VTIMEZONE') {
            my $dtz = DateTime::TimeZone::ICal->from_ical_entry($entry);
            $tz{$dtz->name} = $dtz;
        }
        elsif ($type eq 'VEVENT') {
            push @events, $entry;
        }
        # ... handle other iCal objects ...
     }

     # now we can use this dictionary of time zones elsewhere:

     for my $event (@events) {
         # get a property that is a date
         my ($dtstart) = @{$event->property('dtstart')};

         # get the time zone key from the property parameters
         my $tzid = $dtstart->parameters->{TZID};

         # convert the date in the ordinary fashion
         my $dt = DateTime::Format::ICal->parse_datetime($dtstart->value);

         # the datetime will be 'floating', therefore unaffected
         $dt->set_time_zone($tz{$tzid}) if $tzid and $tz{$tzid};

         # ... do other processing ...
     }

DESCRIPTION

Conforming iCal documents (RFC 5545) have three ways to represent DATE-TIME values: UTC, local, and specified through the TZID mechanism. TZID parameters in relevant properties are references to the same TZID property in one of a list of VTIMEZONE objects, where the information about UTC offsets and their recurrence is embedded in the document.

In practice, many generators of iCal documents use, as TZID keys, valid labels from the Olson database, but others, notably Microsoft Outlook, do not. RFC 5545 explicitly declines to specify a naming convention, so it is sometimes necessary to construct the time zone offsets and daylight savings changes from the VTIMEZONE data itself, rather than just inferring it from the name. That's where this module comes in.

METHODS

The only differences in interface for this module are its constructor and one method, "from_ical_entry". The rest of the interface should work exactly the same way as DateTime::TimeZone, so please consult its documentation for other functionality.

This module overrides the following methods:

new %PARAMS

The constructor has been modified to permit the assembly of a time zone specification from piecemeal data. These are the following initialization parameters:

tzid

This is the TZID of the iCal entry. Note that the accessor to retrieve the value from an instantiated object is name, for congruence with DateTime::TimeZone.

standard

This is an ARRAY reference of DateTime::TimeZone::ICal::Spec instances, or otherwise of HASH references congruent to that module's constructor, which will be coerced into said objects. This parameter is required, and there must be at least one member in the ARRAY.

daylight

Same deal but for Daylight Savings Time. This parameter is optional, as is its contents.

In practice you may not need to ever use this constructor directly, but it may come in handy for instances where you need to compose non-standard time zone behaviour from scratch.

from_ical_entry $ENTRY [, $USE_DATA ]

This class method converts a Data::ICal::Entry object of type VTIMEZONE into a DateTime::TimeZone::ICal object. It will croak if the input is malformed, so wrap it in an eval or equivalent if you expect that possibility.

This method attempts to check if an existing DateTime::TimeZone can be instantiated from the TZID, thus skipping over any local processing. This behaviour can be overridden with the $USE_DATA flag.

AUTHOR

Dorian Taylor, <dorian at cpan.org>

BUGS

Please report any bugs or feature requests to bug-datetime-timezone-ical at rt.cpan.org, or through the web interface at http://rt.cpan.org/NoAuth/ReportBug.html?Queue=DateTime-TimeZone-ICal. I will be notified, and then you'll automatically be notified of progress on your bug as I make changes.

SUPPORT

You can find documentation for this module with the perldoc command.

    perldoc DateTime::TimeZone::ICal

You can also look for information at:

SEE ALSO

DateTime::TimeZone
DateTime::Format::ICal
Data::ICal
RFC 5545
IANA Time Zones (Olson Database)

LICENSE AND COPYRIGHT

Copyright 2015 Dorian Taylor.

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.