Agenda export URL as ICAL in a acceptable format for booking.com

ℹ️ Support
1

I am using Nextcloud for a while, especially the calendar to manage availbility of some rooms of my BnB.

I want to put this BnB on booking, but as I can take booking enquiry directly, I want my Nexcloud calendars to feed Booking.com calendar to avoid conflict of availability.

Booking.com provides such possibility, importing external calendar (widely used it seems from airbnb for instance), and accepting ical calendar.
Unfortunately, the Nextcloud ical URL is rejected with the message “this ical URL is not a valid”.

The ICAL URL from Nextcloud is formated the following :
https://My_FQDN/remote.php/dav/public-calendars/SomeID/?export

I know from a technical point of view, it is valid ICAL, but I would assume the URL format is not what Booking.com expect. Indeed, often platform provide something with .ics

Can we get something like https://My_FQDN/remote.php/dav/public-calendars/SomeID/calendar.ics ?

Note : I tried many times to get Booking.com to provide support on this issue, but as Nextcloud is not very used from their customer, they are not willing to do anything

2

I cannot replicate the described behavior. If you click on the pencil icon behind a calendar to edit it, the sharing dialog opens. If you click on the + button behind “Share link” and then click on the copy button, a url in the following format will be shared:

https://<FQDN>/apps/calendar/p/aabbCCddeeFFggHH

If you click on the copy button behind “Internal Link” a url in the following format will be shared:

https://<FQDN>/remote.php/dav/calendars/<user>/<calendar-name>/

3

You miss one step :
The https://<FQDN>/apps/calendar/p/aabbCCddeeFFggHH link is not yet the ical calendar to be imported. You have to

  • open this link into the browser, it will open the Nextcloud calendar UI.
  • the shared calendar will be displayed. on the left hand side, clik on the “…” button next to the calendar name.
  • then click on “copy the inscription link”
    This is the ical link, on the format I described :
    https://<FQDN>/remote.php/dav/public-calendars/aabbCCddeeFFggHH/?export

I tested it on icalendar.org/validator.html, and also imported it on a google, works fine.
The issue is at least for Booking.com

4

I don’t think so, because I’ve never opened a calendar in a web gui first to be able to mount it. I just checked my Thunderbird subscriptions and can confirm that I always used the following url format for mounting.

https://<FQDN>/remote.php/dav/calendars/<user>/<calendar-name>/

BTW, that’s exactly how it is described in the Nextcloud user manual.

5

You are right, when you want to be able to edit it (using your credential) through webdav/caldav, typically in thunderbird

What I describe above as ical share, is a read-only sharing without credentials. It is used for other to suscribe to your calendar.

6

I found the issue with booking.com : it was not because of URL formatting, but because booking.com expect full-day events (which was not the case of my calendar).
Full explanation found here Resolving the “This iCal URL is invalid” Error when Exporting Bookings to Airbnb | WP Booking Calendar: The #1 Booking Plugin for WordPress.

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7

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