icalPal

Description

icalPal is a command-line tool to query macOS Calendar and Reminders databases for accounts, calendars, events, and tasks. It can be run on any system with Ruby and access to a Calendar or Reminders database.

Table of Contents

Installation
Features
- Additional commands
- Additional options
- Additional properties
Usage
Output formats
History

Installation

Install icalPal for all users:

gem install icalPal

For only you:

gem install --user-install icalPal

As a Homebrew formula:

brew tap ajrosen/tap
brew install icalPal

Features

Compatability with icalBuddy

icalPal tries to be compatible with icalBuddy for command-line options and for output. There are a some important differences to be aware of.

Options require two hyphens, except for single-letter options that require one hyphen
eventsFrom is not supported. Instead there is --from, --to, and --days
uncompletedTasks is simply tasks
undatedUncompletedTasks is simply undatedTasks
tasksDueBefore:DATE uses --from, --to, and --days instead of :DATE
The command can go anywhere; it doesn't have to be the last argument
Property separators are comma-delimited

Additional commands

icalPal also supports additional commands.

icalPal accounts

Shows a list of enabled Calendar accounts. Internally they are known as Stores; you can run icalPal stores instead.

icalPal datedTasks

Shows only reminders that have a due date.

icalPal reminders

reminders, datedReminders, undatedReminders, and remindersDueBefore can be used instead of tasks

Reminders can also be viewed in the Scheduled Reminders calendar, using the events commands. Repeating reminders are treated the same as repeating events.

Additional options

Options can be abbreviated, so long as they are unique. Eg., icalPal -c ev --da 3 is the same as icalPal -c events --days 3.
The -c part is optional, but you cannot abbreviate the command if you leave it off.
Use -o to print the output in different formats. CSV or JSON are interesting choices.
Copy your Calendar or Reminders database file and use --db on it.
--it and --et will filter by Calendar type. Types are Local, Exchange, CalDAV, MobileMe, Subscribed, Birthdays, and Reminders
--il and -el will filter by Reminder list
--id includes completed reminders
--ed excludes uncompleted reminders
--ia includes only all-day events (opposite of --ea)
--aep is like --iep, but adds to the default property list instead of replacing it.
--sep to separate by any property, not just calendar (--sc) or date (--sd)
--color uses a wider color palette. Colors are what you have chosen in the Calendar and Reminders apps, including custom colors
--match lets you filter the results of any command to items where a FIELD matches a regular expression. Eg., --match notes=zoom.us to show only Zoom meeetings

Additional properties

Several additional properties are available for each command.

Accounts
- account
- delegations
- notes
- owner
- type
Calendar
- account
- locale
- notes
- published_URL
- self_identity_email, owner_identity_email
- shared_owner_name, shared_owner_address
- sharees
- subcal_account_id, subcal_url
Tasks
- assignee
- completed
- grocery
- group
- id
- section
- tags
- timezone
- Notifications
  - due (due_date formatted with --df and --tf options)
  - alert (Early Reminder)
  - location, proximity (arriving or leaving), radius (in meters)
  - messaging (email addresses and phone numbers from "When Messaging")

Usage

icalPal: Usage: icalPal [options] [-c] COMMAND

COMMAND must be one of the following:

events                  Print events
tasks                   Print tasks
calendars               Print calendars
accounts                Print accounts

eventsToday             Print events occurring today
eventsToday+NUM         Print events occurring between today and NUM days into the future
eventsNow               Print events occurring at present time
eventsRemaining         Print events occurring between present time and midnight
datedTasks              Print tasks with a due date
undatedTasks            Print tasks with no due date
tasksDueBefore          Print uncompleted tasks due between the given dates

stores can be used instead of accounts
reminders can be used instead of tasks

Global options:

-c, --cmd=COMMAND       Command to run
    --db=DB             Use DB file instead of Calendar
                        (default: ["$HOME/Library/Group Containers/group.com.apple.calendar/Calendar.sqlitedb", "$HOME/Library/Calendars/Calendar.sqlitedb"]
                        For the tasks commands this should be a directory containing .sqlite files
                        (default: ["$HOME/Library/Group Containers/group.com.apple.reminders/Container_v1/Stores"])
    --cf=FILE           Set config file path (default: $HOME/.icalpal)
    --norc              Ignore ICALPAL and ICALPAL_CONFIG environment variables
-o, --output=FORMAT     Print as FORMAT (default: default)
                        [ansi, csv, default, hash, html, json, md, rdoc, remind, toc, xml, yaml]

Including/excluding accounts, calendars, items:

    --is=ACCOUNTS       List of accounts to include
    --es=ACCOUNTS       List of accounts to exclude

    --it=TYPES          List of calendar types to include
    --et=TYPES          List of calendar types to exclude
                        [Local, Exchange, CalDAV, MobileMe, Subscribed, Birthdays, Reminders]

    --ic=CALENDARS      List of calendars to include
    --ec=CALENDARS      List of calendars to exclude

    --il=LISTS          List of reminder lists to include
    --el=LISTS          List of reminder lists to exclude

    --id                Include completed reminders
    --ed                Exclude uncompleted reminders

    --match=FIELD=REGEX Include only items whose FIELD matches REGEX (ignoring case)

Choosing dates:

    --from=DATE         List events starting on or after DATE
    --to=DATE           List events starting on or before DATE
                        DATE can be yesterday, today, tomorrow, +N, -N, or anything accepted by DateTime.parse()
                        See https://ruby-doc.org/stdlib-2.6.1/libdoc/date/rdoc/DateTime.html#method-c-parse

-n                      Include only events from now on
    --days=N            Show N days of events, including start date
    --sed               Show empty dates with --sd
    --ia                Include only all-day events
    --ea                Exclude all-day events

Choose properties to include in the output:

    --iep=PROPERTIES    List of properties to include
    --eep=PROPERTIES    List of properties to exclude
    --aep=PROPERTIES    List of properties to include in addition to the default list

    --itp=PROPERTIES    List of task properties to include
    --etp=PROPERTIES    List of task properties to exclude
    --atp=PROPERTIES    List of task properties to include in addition to the default list
                        Included for backwards compatability, these are aliases for --iep, --eep, and --aep

    --uid               Show event UIDs
    --eed               Exclude end datetimes

    --nc                No calendar names
    --npn               No property names
    --nrd               No relative dates

Properties are listed in the order specified

Use 'all' for PROPERTIES to include all available properties (except any listed in --eep)
Use 'list' for PROPERTIES to list all available properties and exit

Formatting the output:

    --li=N              Show at most N items (default: 0 for no limit)

    --sc                Separate by calendar
    --sd                Separate by date
    --sp                Separate by priority
    --sep=PROPERTY      Separate by PROPERTY

    --sort=PROPERTY     Sort by PROPERTY
    --std               Sort tasks by due date (same as --sort=due_date)
    --stda              Sort tasks by due date (ascending) (same as --sort=due_date -r)
-r, --reverse           Sort in reverse

    --ps=SEPARATORS     List of property separators
    --ss=SEPARATOR      Set section separator

    --df=FORMAT         Set date format
    --tf=FORMAT         Set time format
                        See https://ruby-doc.org/stdlib-2.6.1/libdoc/date/rdoc/DateTime.html#method-i-strftime for details

-b, --bullet=STRING     Use STRING for bullets
    --ab=STRING         Use STRING for alert bullets
    --nb                Do not use bullets
    --nnr=SEPARATOR     Set replacement for newlines within notes

-f                      Format output using standard ANSI colors
    --color             Format output using a larger color palette

Help:

-h, --help              Show this message
-V, -v, --version       Show version and exit (3.10.0)
-d, --debug=LEVEL       Set the logging level (default: warn)
                        [debug, info, warn, error, fatal]

Environment variables:

ICALPAL                 Additional arguments
ICALPAL_CONFIG          Additional arguments from a file
                        (default: $HOME/.icalpal)

Do not quote or escape values.  Options set in ICALPAL override ICALPAL_CONFIG.  Options on the command line override ICALPAL.

Output formats

icalPal supports several output formats. The default format tries to mimic icalBuddy as much as possible.

CSV, Hash, JSON, XML, and YAML print all fields for all items in their respective formats. From that you can analyze the results any way you like. Remind format uses a minimal implementation built into icalPal.

Control characters are escaped in these formats to ensure they remain properly formatted.

Other formats such as ANSI, HTML, Markdown, RDoc, and TOC, use Ruby's RDoc::Markup framework to build and render the items. See RDoc for a breakdown of how icalPal uses RDoc::Markup.

History

I used icalBuddy for many years. It's great for scripting, automation, and as a widget for apps like Übersicht, GeekTool, and SketchyBar.

As with many applications, I started to run into some limitations in icalBuddy. The biggest being that active development ended in 2014. It's only thanks to the efforts of Jim Lawton that it even compiles anymore.

Instead of trying to understand and extend the existing code, I chose to start anew using my language of choice: Ruby. Using Ruby meant there is much less code; a little over 2,200 lines vs. 7,000. It also means icalPal is multi-platform.

Because icalPal is written in Ruby, and not a native Mac application, you can run it just about anywhere. It's been tested with the versions of Ruby included with macOS Sequoia and Tahoe (2.6.10) and Homebrew (3.4.x).

I won't pretend to understand why you would want to run this on Linux or Windows. But since icalPal is written in Ruby and gets its data directly from the Calendar and Reminders database files instead of an API, you can.