Q: Appropriate or existing usage (Google Calendar)

Hey folks,

For ages I have been looking for a nice Google Calendar that I can just subscribe to to keep track of all the game releases. There have been a few but they are all poorly maintained. My thought is to use the data / API here married with the Google Calendar API to run a daily process (either via Cron or perhaps via a Google App Engine system) to keep a public calendar up to date for people to subscribe to.

My question is A) if it is a reasonable use of the API. It seems like it should be and B) if anyone knows of a similar existing usage and if so I won't bother doing it myself.

Thanks much.

I am working on a cronjob that updates a google calendar with the giantbomb information. I have it working so it will add new games to the calendar but it will not handle modifications yet. As soon as I have that I will release the code and let anyone else do what they want with it. If you just want the calendars, these are all the calendars that the giantbomb api provides me (script looks at all games being released now + 2 years). It also doesn't take into account games that were released. I'm open to suggestions since I'm just doing this for fun and a friend.

Public Google Calendars (these are the ical urls, just do an import url). I haven't looked to see if these URLs will propagate updates. I'm new to sharing google calendars so I'm need to look at how to share it publicly with read only access and propagate updates.

amazon fire - https://www.google.com/calendar/ical/p0s50bs39n73kkkg2ka4nt68q8%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics

amiga - https://www.google.com/calendar/ical/rv66nh0r9lsismsfv3lufdmm10%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics

android - https://www.google.com/calendar/ical/nq2vu55kcum0idrjrckqc1jv98%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics

arcade - https://www.google.com/calendar/ical/4f718vjg2eeccor6s1dknqfhq8%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics

atari 2600 - https://www.google.com/calendar/ical/886jahu4jd9e9fo0154nt81vck%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics

browser - https://www.google.com/calendar/ical/h92arme7rbbttc2b2s0m7kekns%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics

dreamcast - https://www.google.com/calendar/ical/vfka878olpa8mi2l18vavq1s5s%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics

dsiware - https://www.google.com/calendar/ical/hk2ed4odnfc12pjlv9tujqkejs%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics

game boy color - https://www.google.com/calendar/ical/38aqlrod5e2sk007esnoprmp8g%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics

intellivision - https://www.google.com/calendar/ical/t4052o2vdglfjfn4grm7q1u96g%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics

ipad - https://www.google.com/calendar/ical/l2uj7so5l7en2mthf08c6hfvb8%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics

iphone - https://www.google.com/calendar/ical/dur4piuqp2splek7l37j13r11o%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics

ipod - https://www.google.com/calendar/ical/5pqf9ihvaaknkl9bko89jj0m4c%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics

leapster - https://www.google.com/calendar/ical/98urudnng4iedpb5dch36rq4qg%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics

linux - https://www.google.com/calendar/ical/1c36bd9v49dafdgtuon8jotgac%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics

mac - https://www.google.com/calendar/ical/0j63qu18eo5m7m5g1fjl62qqi4%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics

neo geo pocket color - https://www.google.com/calendar/ical/qiav418ocom9f6fgvb3f9rgcdk%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics

nintendo 3ds eshop - https://www.google.com/calendar/ical/5vh8t8dia7037ekg0ppskt2efk%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics

nintendo 3ds - https://www.google.com/calendar/ical/gbf573dplmhdrbkp24pj779gdk%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics

nintendo ds - https://www.google.com/calendar/ical/r2ve05e8mhn56bpr2ccoomhego%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics

nintendo entertainment system - https://www.google.com/calendar/ical/t2u7f5t2o60fqakeofkrd0t60s%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics

ouya - https://www.google.com/calendar/ical/nt51p060at2p4s6phc54o8ngrk%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics

pc - https://www.google.com/calendar/ical/m33k52tcdad29c8ck16hlhtr5k%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics

pinball - https://www.google.com/calendar/ical/rl6k6fbslsmnqi8d0s46ce6lpg%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics

playstation 3 - https://www.google.com/calendar/ical/pag5gqtqs20g0ek8v1gmsmruu0%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics

playstation 4 - https://www.google.com/calendar/ical/ukgue2nj7ljohh8t1qkes5rnqo%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics

playstation network (ps3) - https://www.google.com/calendar/ical/9f2aaoj3uhi5bo6a9cbtvja4j8%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics

playstation network (psp) - https://www.google.com/calendar/ical/166ngmvgnoo6k1nleehm837gis%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics

playstation network (vita) - https://www.google.com/calendar/ical/10vvgdi341veh0okqchlhpo8cs%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics

playstation portable - https://www.google.com/calendar/ical/341478qrteu3omu3csiojhp9lo%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics

super nintendo entertainment system - https://www.google.com/calendar/ical/fa5rml46gdgo5qjmdhh5308gkk%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics

wii - https://www.google.com/calendar/ical/98odm3ucfdaocv01a6cmdak0no%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics

wii u - https://www.google.com/calendar/ical/2vkb1184pskpeue2un6057ji74%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics

windows phone - https://www.google.com/calendar/ical/9odm7krjtvlrdmbabcjvagv6uk%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics

xbox 360 - https://www.google.com/calendar/ical/m70r0edshsvi103vlb4lhlbgvs%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics

xbox 360 games store - https://www.google.com/calendar/ical/8pm6l7f39i2om5vauoepemja8k%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics

xbox one - https://www.google.com/calendar/ical/al7ppc77st17ugicdtd0bfv788%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics

Interesting work. I finally got in some time on this myself today to the point that I have all the game dates being parsed out so it is just working with the Java calendar API to get them into one. I was actually planning for a single calendar and based on the amount of data in the releases API that seems pretty reasonable as there isn't a massive amount there. I like this approach more than subscribing to a lot of calendars. Easy enough to include the platform in the entry name with some standard formatting.

I am also a little torn about processing differences. It looks pretty easy to get the list of events from the calendar so after getting all the release data (without empty day / month / year fields, because I drop those on the floor) checking the dates against those in the calendar shouldn't be too bad.. then if they are different just delete the old entry and create a new one. There is always the option to wipe them clean then fill them in with the data again, though I think it is likely to be more wasteful.

@penguinpowered: Sounds like were going the same route, just different end goals. The friend like an option we saw elsewhere that let you pick a platform that you care about (ie he didn't care about iphone game releases). This was the generic compromise for him and keeping it generic for everyone. Whenever I get the chance to finish up that last bit, I'll have the code published on github so anyone can customize it to their liking. Either way, good luck with the Java calendar. It's been a fun learning exercise for me/python.

BTW, the solution I am working on for updates to changed entries is to work on them based on the name. If the name is in the calendar, verify the contents/date are the same and if not, do the update otherwise leave it be. Since I had to rate limit my queries due to the number of updates I can do per minute due to the google limit, I figure I would actually try to be somewhat more efficient with my updates/queries

@jasonunrein: These calendars are absolutely fantastic, thanks for providing them!

@deliciousbees@jasonunrein finished up the initial pass at getting the data into a single calendar, in case you are interested at all.

https://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=1iiiid4e35autcukkei4f4kgf4%40group.calendar.google.com&ctz=America/New_York

There is a little work I still plan to do, like some default color coding based on platform, and some de-dup verification work and optimization of the calendar entry replacement algorithm. It has been a fun little toy project though. Thanks so much for the great API to work with!

Any feedback on the structure is most welcomed. I think I will compress the entries so that all regions / platforms will be reflected in a single entry for a single day. If, for example, a game is coming out for 3 platforms in 3 regions in one day the entry would be like "Game [PS3 / PS4 / XBOne] [US / UK / Japan]" rather than right now where every single platform and region ends up being another entry and therefore on some days there are 20+ entries but really only 2 or 3 games coming out.

Bumping this thread so I can request updates from @jasonunrein for all those hot new platforms (mainly the Switch). Thanks for keeping these calendars alive for years!

@deliciousbees aww, bait and switch ;). i thought for a moment you might be using my "combined" calendar.. and sadly i haven't seen a good way to actually figure out if anyone is finding my calendar useful at all. i sort of prefer it vs. having all the platforms in separate calendars, but perhaps I am the only one.. i don't have a switch but it does remind me i need to take a look at my code which I did translate to c# from java for the fun of it a while back but haven't updated to handle new platform names.