Inthe.am Calendar Sync

What does it do?

This script syncs your events from inthe.am to Google Calendar.

Inthe.am has iCal feed support, but Google Calendar has a long-standing bug making iCal syncs take up to several days. Instead of relying on that functionality, inthe.am users can use this script that bypasses the issue and gets new events from your task list onto your calendar almost instantly via the Google Calendar API.

Usage

This program doesn't take any command line arguments, but it does have a config file. Config file information is in the Installation subheading.

Running the program runs a sync from your inthe.am account to Google Calendar. There isn't any background worker functionality built in, so if you want it to run contiunously, use a task scheduler like cron.

You can run the program with ./intheAMsync.py.

Installation Instructions

Before you begin: you may wish to run this script with cron (or similar) on a headless server. You'll need to start these steps on a machine with a modern GUI web browser first. Info on what to do for headless servers is provided later on in the setup.

1. Download this repository as a zip file and extract or clone to somewhere on your hard drive.

2. Download requests, pytz and google-api-python-client with pip. (sudo pip install requests pytz google-api-python-client)

3. Configure the program. Open intheAMsync.conf with your favorite text editor. I'll explain the fields:

   • inthe.am API key: Your key obtained from inthe.am settings. Just copy/paste it in.
   • calendar id: You need to make a new calendar to sync events into. In the calendar settings for this new calendar, there should be a field that looks like <random letters/numbers>@group.calendar.google.com. Copy this in.
   • time zone: This should be primary time zone you are in. Match this to the settings for your calendar as well. Example: America/New_York.
   • day ends: Express this as a 24-hour time, like 23:30. Tasks due before this time show up as due the day before. If you want tasks to always show up on they day they're due, put 24:00 as the time. If you want all tasks to show up the day before they're due, put in 00:00. Example: My day ends at 23:00, and today is Thursday. A task due at 23:45 would show as being due Thursday, while a task due at 11:00 would show as being due Wednesday. This feature is helpful for those who always want to have everything done without worrying when in the day a task is due.

4. Lastly, before you can run the program, you need your own Google Calendar API credentials, since you're running this yourself.

   1. Go to console.developers.google.com.
   2. On the left side, click Credentials.
   3. Click the blue Create Credentials box.
   4. Click OAuth Client ID.
   5. Select type Other and name it InTheAmSync.
   6. Exit the screen letting you copy/paste your credentials. You should now be out of the popup wizard.
   7. On the right side, click the download button in the row containing InTheAMSync. It's labeled "Download JSON"
   8. Take this file you downloaded, rename it to "client_id.json" and put it in the same directory as the config file and sync script.

5. Run program with ./intheAMsync.py. It will open your default browser and ask you to log into your google account. Your details will be saved on disk at ~/.credentials, so this process will only need to occur once. If you want to use this program on a headless server, do this step on a non-headless box and and move the .credentials folder to your server, along with the program directory. The google API does not officially support headless operation, but this workaround works fine.

6. Run the program every time you want to sync. You can do this automatically at set intervals with cron, as well. I'm sure the author of inthe.am would prefer you don't set the sync interval too high, however.

Other info regarding sync frequency: For Google Calendar, there's a maximum of 1 million API calls/day. Each sync uses at least one API call, and an additional one for every event added or deleted. At this point, moves count as two calls. If you have really huge task lists or use one Google API key for lots of people, you may run into the the limit there.

Upgrading

New versions come out from time to time, and if you decide to upgrade, make sure you replace all files, including the config file. The configuration format/items may have changed between versions. Keep your old config around, and fill the new one in with information from the old config, where applicable.