Outlook iCal meeting invitation description issue

Question

I am sending iCal event invitation using php. Everything displays in proper manner and RVSP button displayed correctly. But description is cutting down after first line. For example if my description is:

The problem occurs when I have multiple lines in the description. 
If it contains the text for example I will only get in my outlook calendar 
description. The part after disappears.

The only first line displays like:

The problem occurs when I have multiple lines in the description.

If someone help me. I have already wrap the lines but after first line it will not displayed. Here is code snippet.

function ical_split($preamble, $value) {
    $value = trim($value);
    $value = strip_tags($value);
    $value = preg_replace('/\n+/', ' ', $value);
    $value = preg_replace('/\s{2,}/', ' ', $value);
    $preamble_len = strlen($preamble);
    $lines = array();
    while (strlen($value)>(74-$preamble_len)) {
        $space = (74-$preamble_len);
        $mbcc = $space;
        while ($mbcc) {
            $line = mb_substr($value, 0, $mbcc);
            $oct = strlen($line);
            if ($oct > $space) {
                $mbcc -= $oct-$space;
            }
            else {
                $lines[] = $line;
                $preamble_len = 1; // Still take the tab into account
                $value = mb_substr($value, $mbcc);
                break;
            }
        }
    }
    if (!empty($value)) {
        $lines[] = $value;
    }
    return join($lines, "\\n\\t");
}

And I called it as follows:

$meeting_notes="The problem occurs when I have multiple lines in the description. If it contains the text for example I will only get in my outlook calendar description. The part after disappears."
ical_split('DESCRIPTION:', $meeting_notes)

Here the detail of attached ics file.

BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
PRODID:-//Microsoft Corporation//Outlook 11.0 MIMEDIR//EN
CALSCALE:GREGORIAN
METHOD:REQUEST
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART:20150227T163000Z
DTEND:20150227T173000Z
DTSTAMP:20150211T094306Z
ORGANIZER;CN=Charlene Switzer:MAILTO:email_here
UID:40
ATTENDEE;CUTYPE=INDIVIDUAL;ROLE=REQ-PARTICIPANT;PARTSTAT=NEEDS-ACTION;RSVP=TRUE;CN=name_here;X-NUM-GUESTS=0:MAILTO:email_here
DESCRIPTION:The problem occurs when I have multiple lines in the description. If it contains the text for example I will only get in my outlook calendar description. The part after disappears.
LOCATION:asdf asd
SEQUENCE:0
STATUS:CONFIRMED
TRANSP:OPAQUE
SUMMARY:Meeting
PRIORITY:5
CLASS:PUBLIC
BEGIN:VTIMEZONE
TZID:Eastern
END:VTIMEZONE
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR

I formatted your question a bit - it looked as if you experimented with the variety of code markup possibilities (Backticks, quotes, code snippets, indents) :-) — chiccodoro, Mar 16 '15 at 09:48

score 2 · Accepted Answer · edited Oct 07 '21 at 10:55

2

To expend on Dmitry's explanation, you need to refer to RFC5545 which specifies the iCalendar format

[3.1. Content Lines][1]

The iCalendar object is organized into individual lines of text, called content lines. Content lines are delimited by a line break, which is a CRLF sequence (CR character followed by LF character).

Lines of text SHOULD NOT be longer than 75 octets, excluding the line break. Long content lines SHOULD be split into a multiple line representations using a line "folding" technique. That is, a long line can be split between any two characters by inserting a CRLF immediately followed by a single linear white-space character (i.e., SPACE or HTAB).

So back to your question, like Dmitry's suggest you should add a TAB or a SPACE after your CRLF but also you should make sure your lines aren't longer than 75bytes. [1]: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc5545#section-3.1

edited Oct 07 '21 at 10:55

Community

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1

answered Feb 14 '15 at 17:10

Auberon Vacher

4,655
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Can you send me any example using php.? – israr Feb 17 '15 at 07:40
I do not code in php, maybe you could share the ical file to help see what is wrong in the ouptu – Auberon Vacher Feb 18 '15 at 19:51
I have posted the ics file detail. Please have a look at that. – israr Feb 19 '15 at 08:20
could you add the code snippet with the line folding to see what is failing – Auberon Vacher Feb 25 '15 at 14:14
i meant the .ics file with the folded line as I do not have a php setup running to test your code – Auberon Vacher Feb 25 '15 at 17:01
I have added the ics file data in the question you can test it. – israr Feb 26 '15 at 08:47

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 13 '15 at 16:34

0

Make sure the second lines start with a tab (0x9) - this way the lines will be correctly unwrapped.

answered Feb 13 '15 at 16:34

Dmitry Streblechenko

62,942
4
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Can you give me some hint in php to find 75 octets and add tab (0x9)? – israr Feb 17 '15 at 07:42
Do you already not wrap the lines? If you don't, you must encode the line breaks - replace them with \n. – Dmitry Streblechenko Feb 17 '15 at 13:57
Also, if you have specific code questions, post the relevant snippets of your code and indicate clearly what the problem is. – Dmitry Streblechenko Feb 17 '15 at 13:58
I have specified the code snippet. Please check it. – israr Feb 17 '15 at 14:06
I don't use PHP, so it looks Ok to me... Can you step through your code? What exactly does not work? – Dmitry Streblechenko Feb 17 '15 at 16:21
`return join($lines, "\\n\\t");` It will added a tab and a new line. It will fold it correctly but when we open the event in calender and click on view details only first row display. – israr Feb 18 '15 at 09:12

Outlook iCal meeting invitation description issue

2 Answers2

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