Google Calendar API invites users to great experiences

Posted by Wesley Chun, Developer Advocate, Google Apps

Have you ever booked a dining reservation, plane ticket, hotel room, concert ticket, or seats to the game from your favorite app, only to have to exit that booking app to enter the details into your calendar? It doesn’t make for a friendly user experience. Why can’t today’s apps do that for you automatically?

In case you missed it the episode 97 of #GoogleDev100 the other week, I aim to inspire how app developers can streamline that process with the help of the Google Calendar API. A short Python script, anchored by the following snippet, is illustrated to show developers how easy it is to programmatically add calendar events:

CALENDAR = apiclient.discovery.build(calendar, v3, http=creds.authorize(Http()))
GMT_OFF = -07:00 # PDT/MST/GMT-7
EVENT = {
 summary: Dinner with friends,
 start: {dateTime: 2015-09-18T19:00:00%s % GMT_OFF},
 end: {dateTime: 2015-09-18T22:00:00%s % GMT_OFF},
 attendees: [
 {email: friend1@example.com},
 {email: friend2@example.com},
 ],
}
CALENDAR.events().insert(calendarId=primary, body=EVENT).execute()

For deeper dive into the script, check out the corresponding blogpost. With code like that, your app can automatically insert your relevant events into your users’ calendars, saving them the effort of manually doing it themselves. One of the surprising aspects is that a limited set of actions, such as RSVPing, is even available to non-Google Calendar users. By the way, inserting events is just the beginning. Developers can also delete or update events instantly in case that upcoming dinner gets pushed back a few weeks. Events can even be repeated with a recurrence rule. Attachments are also supported so you can provide your users a PDF of the concert tickets they just booked. Those are just some of the things the API is capable of.

Ready to get started? Much more information, including code samples in Java, PHP, .NET, Android, iOS, and more, can be found in the Google Calendar API documentation. If you’re new to the Launchpad Online developer series, we share technical content aimed at novice Google developers… the latest tools and features with a little bit of code to help you launch that app. Please give us your feedback below and tell us what topics you would like to see in future episodes!

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