Manage Appointments: Create & Manipulate, Convert ICS to MSG

Create an Appointment and Save to Disk in MSG or ICS Format

The Appointment class in Aspose.Email for .NET can be used to create a new appointment. In this article, we first create an appointment and save it to a disk in ICS format.Following steps are required to create an appointment and save it to a disk.

  1. Create an instance of the Appointment class and initialize it with this constructor.
  2. Pass the following arguments in the above constructor
    1. Location
    2. Summary
    3. Description
    4. Start Date
    5. End Date
    6. Organizer
    7. Attendees
  3. Call the Save() method and specify the file name and format in the arguments.

The appointment can be opened in Microsoft Outlook or any program that can load an ICS file. If the file is opened in Microsoft Outlook it automatically adds the appointment in the Outlook calendar.

The following code snippet shows you how to create and save an appointment to a disk in ICS or MSG format.

// For complete examples and data files, please go to https://github.com/aspose-email/Aspose.Email-for-.NET

// Create and initialize an instance of the Appointment class
Appointment appointment = new Appointment(
    "Meeting Room 3 at Office Headquarters",// Location
    "Monthly Meeting",                      // Summary
    "Please confirm your availability.",    // Description
    new DateTime(2015, 2, 8, 13, 0, 0),     // Start date
    new DateTime(2015, 2, 8, 14, 0, 0),     // End date
    "from@domain.com",                      // Organizer
    "attendees@domain.com");                // Attendees

// Save the appointment to disk in ICS format            
appointment.Save(fileName + ".ics", new AppointmentIcsSaveOptions());
Console.WriteLine("Appointment created and saved to disk successfully.");

// Save the appointment to disk in MSG format
appointment.Save(fileName + ".msg", new AppointmentMsgSaveOptions(););
Console.WriteLine("Appointment created and saved to disk successfully.");

Create an Appointment with HTML Content

You can specify alternative representations of the event’s description in different content types using the X-ALT-DESC header. It allows recipients of the iCalendar file to choose the representation that best suits their needs. For example, you may include a plain text description using the “text/plain” content type and an HTML description using the “text/html” content type. The X-ALT-DESC header is added for each alternative representation. To create an appointment with HTML content, set the HtmlDescription property.

Try the following code sample to create an appointment with alternative HTML description:

  1. Create a new instance of the Appointment class.
  2. Provide the necessary parameters to the Appointment constructor:
    • Specify the location of the appointment.
    • Set the start date and time.
    • Set the end date and time.
    • Specify the organizer.
    • Specify the attendee.
  3. Set the HtmlDescription property of the appointment object, indicating that the description is in HTML format.
  4. Set the Description property of the appointment object to an HTML-formatted string, enclosed within a multiline string:
    • The HTML markup includes a <style> block defining a CSS class named “text” with font styles.
    • The HTML body contains a paragraph tag <p> with the CSS class “text”, and the actual invitation message.
  5. The appointment object is now ready, and you can perform further operations or save it as an iCalendar file.
var appointment = new Appointment("Bygget 83",
    DateTime.UtcNow, // start date
    DateTime.UtcNow.AddHours(1), // end date
    new MailAddress("TintinStrom@from.com", "Tintin Strom"), // organizer
    new MailAddress("AinaMartensson@to.com", "Aina Martensson")) // attendee
{
    HtmlDescription = @"
    <html>
     <style type=""text/css"">
      .text {
             font-family:'Comic Sans MS';
             font-size:16px;
            }
     </style>
    <body>
     <p class=""text"">Hi, I'm happy to invite you to our party.</p>
    </body>
    </html>"
};

Create a Draft Appointment Request

It was shown in our earlier articles how to create and save an appointment in ICS format. It is often required to create an Appointment request in a Draft mode, so as the basic information is added and then the same draft Appointment be forwarded to other users for necessary changes according to individual uses. In order to save an Appointment in a Draft mode, the MethodType property of Appointment class should be set to AppointmentMethodType.Publish. The following code snippet shows you how to create a draft appointment request.

string sender = "test@gmail.com";
string recipient = "test@email.com";

MailMessage message = new MailMessage(sender, recipient, string.Empty, string.Empty);

Appointment app = new Appointment(string.Empty, DateTime.Now, DateTime.Now, sender, recipient)
{
    MethodType = AppointmentMethodType.Publish
};

message.AddAlternateView(app.RequestApointment());

MapiMessage msg = MapiMessage.FromMailMessage(message);

// Save the appointment as draft.
msg.Save(dstDraft);

Console.WriteLine(Environment.NewLine + "Draft saved at " + dstDraft);

Draft Appointment Creation from Text

The following code snippet shows you how to create a draft appointment from Text. 

string ical = @"BEGIN:VCALENDAR
METHOD:PUBLISH
PRODID:-//Aspose Ltd//iCalender Builder (v3.0)//EN
VERSION:2.0
BEGIN:VEVENT
ATTENDEE;CN=test@gmail.com:mailto:test@gmail.com
DTSTART:20130220T171439
DTEND:20130220T174439
DTSTAMP:20130220T161439Z
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR";

string sender = "test@gmail.com";
string recipient = "test@email.com";
MailMessage message = new MailMessage(sender, recipient, string.Empty, string.Empty);
AlternateView av = AlternateView.CreateAlternateViewFromString(ical, new ContentType("text/calendar"));
message.AlternateViews.Add(av);
MapiMessage msg = MapiMessage.FromMailMessage(message);
msg.Save(dataDir + "draft_out.msg");

Customize Appointments

Set Participants Status of Appointment Attendees

Aspose.Email for .NET API lets you set the status of appointment attendees while formulating a reply message. This adds the PARTSTAT property to the ICS file.

DateTime startDate = new DateTime(2011, 12, 10, 10, 12, 11),
         endDate = new DateTime(2012, 11, 13, 13, 11, 12);
MailAddress organizer = new MailAddress("aaa@amail.com", "Organizer");
MailAddressCollection attendees = new MailAddressCollection();
MailAddress attendee1 = new MailAddress("bbb@bmail.com", "First attendee");
MailAddress attendee2 = new MailAddress("ccc@cmail.com", "Second attendee");

attendee1.ParticipationStatus = ParticipationStatus.Accepted;
attendee2.ParticipationStatus = ParticipationStatus.Declined;
attendees.Add(attendee1);
attendees.Add(attendee2);

Appointment target = new Appointment(location, startDate, endDate, organizer, attendees);

Customize Product Identifier for ICalendar

Aspose.Email for .NET API allows to get or set the product identifier that created iCalendar object.

string description = "Test Description";
Appointment app = new Appointment("location", "test appointment", description, DateTime.Today,
DateTime.Today.AddDays(1), "first@test.com", "second@test.com");

IcsSaveOptions saveOptions = IcsSaveOptions.Default;
saveOptions.ProductId = "Test Corporation";
app.Save(dataDir + "ChangeProdIdOfICS.ics", saveOptions);

Loading Appointments

Also, the Appointment class can be used to load an appointment from ICS file.

Load an Appointment in ICS Format

To load an appointment in ICS format, the following steps are required:

  1. Create an instance of the Appointment class.
  2. Call the Load() method by providing the path of the ICS file.
  3. Read any property to get any information from the appointment (ICS file).

The following code snippet shows you how to load an appointment in ICS format.

// Load an Appointment just created and saved to disk and display its details.
Appointment loadedAppointment = Appointment.Load(dstEmail);
Console.WriteLine(Environment.NewLine + "Loaded Appointment details are as follows:");
// Display the appointment information on screen
Console.WriteLine("Summary: " + loadedAppointment.Summary);
Console.WriteLine("Location: " + loadedAppointment.Location);
Console.WriteLine("Description: " + loadedAppointment.Description);
Console.WriteLine("Start date: " + loadedAppointment.StartDate);
Console.WriteLine("End date: " + loadedAppointment.EndDate);
Console.WriteLine("Organizer: " + appointment.Organizer);
Console.WriteLine("Attendees: " + appointment.Attendees);
Console.WriteLine(Environment.NewLine + "Appointment loaded successfully from " + dstEmail);

Convert ICS to MSG

The API allows you easily convert an Appointment to a message object. The following code example shows how to convert an appointment request into a MailMessage or MapiMessage:

var appointment = Appointment.Load("appRequest.ics");

var eml = appointment.ToMailMessage();
var msg = appointment.ToMapiMessage();

Read Multiple Events from ICS File

List<Appointment> appointments = new List<Appointment>();
CalendarReader reader = new CalendarReader(dataDir + "US-Holidays.ics");

while (reader.NextEvent())
{
    appointments.Add(reader.Current);
}
//working with appointments...

Write Multiple Events to ICS File

IcsSaveOptions saveOptions = new IcsSaveOptions();
saveOptions.Action = AppointmentAction.Create;
using (CalendarWriter writer = new CalendarWriter(dataDir + "WriteMultipleEventsToICS_out.ics", saveOptions))
{
    for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++)
    {
        Appointment app = new Appointment(string.Empty, DateTime.Now, DateTime.Now, "sender@domain.com", "receiver@domain.com");
        app.Description = "Test body " + i;
        app.Summary = "Test summary:" + i;
        writer.Write(app);
    }
}

Determine the Appointment Version

To determine the version of an appointment, you can use the Appointment.Version property of the Appointment class. This property assists to determine which version their files are based on, ensuring integration with other systems and apps.

The following code sample shows how to implement this property in your project:

var app = Appointment.Load("meeting.ics");

if (app.Version == 1.0)
{
    // do something
}
Working with MIME Messages Working with Outlook Items