Recurring Events through Web Service

[Sorry about the repost...I needed to post with my MSDN alias!]

I am in search of a simple solution for displaying recurring
events from the list web service. Currently, normal event data
is easily retrieved with fieldref names such as Title, Description,
EventDate, and EndDate. However, recurring events seem to be
trickier. I was hoping that the web service would have some
query option element that automatically expands recurring
events based on the recurrence definition, but that seems to
be missing.

Upon querying the web service for list items, I have found an
fRecurrence field (-1 for recurring, 0 for normal), and a
RecurrenceData field that returns something along the lines of:
<recurrence><rule><firstDayOfWeek>su</firstDayOfWeek>
<repeat><daily dayFrequency='1' /></repeat>
<windowEnd>2004-08-27T04:40:00Z</windowEnd></rule></recurrence>

Does anyone know of a solution that will give me all occurrences
without requiring me to parse the RecurrenceData? It seems a little
bizarre that a common request such as "give me today's events"
would not made more trivial, or that you might have to pull down
and evaluate every recurring event every time you wanted to make
this request. The webpart does it...how can I?

Thanks,
Joel

--
Joel D Kraft
Case Western Reserve University

v-wdxu
Wed Aug 11 21:50:33 CDT 2004

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Hi Joel,

I have replied your old issue. For your convenience, I paste my reply here
for you.
"As I know on this issue, you will need to parse the xml to obtain the
occurence date in the client side. From the return result of web service,
you can check each item to see whether the RecurrenceData field of the one
is not null; then obtain the recurrence information and calculate the
occurence date. "

Please feel free to let me know if you have any question.

Best Regards,
Wei-Dong Xu
Microsoft Product Support Services
Get Secure! - www.microsoft.com/security
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
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\viewkind4\uc1\pard\lang2052\f0\fs20 Hi Joel,
\par
\par I have replied your old issue. For your convenience, I paste my reply here for you.
\par "As I know on this issue, you will need to parse the xml to obtain the occurence date in the client side. From the return result of web service, you can check each item to see whether the RecurrenceData field of the one is not null; then obtain the recurrence information and calculate the occurence date. "
\par
\par Please feel free to let me know if you have any question.
\par
\par Best Regards,
\par Wei-Dong Xu
\par Microsoft Product Support Services
\par Get Secure! - www.microsoft.com/security
\par This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
\par
\par }
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jdkraft
Thu Aug 12 12:31:01 CDT 2004

> "As I know on this issue, you will need to parse the xml to obtain the
> occurence date in the client side. From the return result of web service,
> you can check each item to see whether the RecurrenceData field of the one
> is not null; then obtain the recurrence information and calculate the
> occurence date. "
>
> Please feel free to let me know if you have any question.

Well that surely isn't the answer I was looking for!! Does the
SharePoint site have to do that as well? The lists seem to display
recurring events correctly on some of the event views, while others
show just the initial entry. Is it possible to access the different views
through the Web Service that would generate the expanded listing??

I'm not a fan of the parsing, but the biggest problem is that you don't
have any way to select out the entries that you should even parse.
If a list has a lot of entries, and most of them are really in the past,
would you really have to download them all to parse the recurrence
patterns to find that maybe only a couple are active? So you've wasted
bandwidth for nothing. If there is no other solution, is there at least
a way to sort out the candidates to check??

Joel

mdg12
Thu Aug 12 22:24:11 CDT 2004

Joel D Kraft <jdkraft@nospam.nospam> wrote in message news:<01FC3709-6672-4404-9EF5-D62B31D4DA18@microsoft.com>...
> > "As I know on this issue, you will need to parse the xml to obtain the
> > occurence date in the client side. From the return result of web service,
> > you can check each item to see whether the RecurrenceData field of the one
> > is not null; then obtain the recurrence information and calculate the
> > occurence date. "
> >
> > Please feel free to let me know if you have any question.
>
> Well that surely isn't the answer I was looking for!! Does the
> SharePoint site have to do that as well? The lists seem to display
> recurring events correctly on some of the event views, while others
> show just the initial entry. Is it possible to access the different views
> through the Web Service that would generate the expanded listing??
>
> I'm not a fan of the parsing, but the biggest problem is that you don't
> have any way to select out the entries that you should even parse.
> If a list has a lot of entries, and most of them are really in the past,
> would you really have to download them all to parse the recurrence
> patterns to find that maybe only a couple are active? So you've wasted
> bandwidth for nothing. If there is no other solution, is there at least
> a way to sort out the candidates to check??
>
> Joel



I believe the non-active patterns can be ruled out by checking the
EndDate field (which seems to be set to the last occurence in the
pattern). Therefore the query to get all active recurring posts would
be RecurringData!=null and EndDate>=DateTime.Now. That would at least
limit the number of patterns to parse/expand.

v-wdxu
Fri Aug 13 03:02:26 CDT 2004

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Hi Joel,

Currently we are researching this issue for you. Appreciate your patience!
We will post back as soon as possible.

Best Regards,
Wei-Dong Xu
Microsoft Product Support Services
Get Secure! - www.microsoft.com/security
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
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\viewkind4\uc1\pard\lang2052\f0\fs20 Hi Joel,
\par
\par Currently we are researching this issue for you. Appreciate your patience! We will post back as soon as possible.
\par
\par Best Regards,
\par Wei-Dong Xu
\par Microsoft Product Support Services
\par Get Secure! - www.microsoft.com/security
\par This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
\par
\par }
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v-wdxu
Fri Aug 13 19:31:07 CDT 2004

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Hi Joel,

From my research, when you obtain the RecurrenceData from the web service,
we can see this as the recurring rule for the meeting. Then you will need
to perform one parse to ge the date of meeting(s). As I know, these date is
not stored in the database, we will need to calculate them at the runtime.

Please feel free to let me know if you have any further question.

Best Regards,
Wei-Dong Xu
Microsoft Product Support Services
Get Secure! - www.microsoft.com/security
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
------=_NextPart_0001_281B5512
Content-Type: text/x-rtf
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

{\rtf1\ansi\ansicpg936\deff0\deflang1033\deflangfe2052{\fonttbl{\f0\fnil\fprq2\fcharset0 MS Sans Serif;}}
\viewkind4\uc1\pard\lang2052\f0\fs20 Hi Joel,
\par
\par From my research, when you obtain the RecurrenceData from the web service, we can see this as the recurring rule for the meeting. Then you will need to perform one parse to ge the date of meeting(s). As I know, these date is not stored in the database, we will need to calculate them at the runtime.
\par
\par Please feel free to let me know if you have any further question.
\par
\par Best Regards,
\par Wei-Dong Xu
\par Microsoft Product Support Services
\par Get Secure! - www.microsoft.com/security
\par This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
\par
\par }
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