The “Soirées estivales” (2009) as icalendar

The programmes for 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020 are also available.

Here is the icalendar file for summer 2009:

Soirées estivales 2009 [ics]

The “Conseil Général” (regional government) of the Alpes-Maritimes sponsors a large number of cultural events. In the summer, they are collectively promoted under the name “Soirées estivales.”

Unfortunately, the programme is only available in HTML or PDF. It is not so easy to look at multiple Web pages (there is a lot more to do in the region!). All events in a single calendar is much easier. So I wrote a little program to convert the HTML pages to icalendar (“.ics”). Now you can load the full programme into your calendar program.

It wasn't as easy as it should have been. It took me nearly four hours to write the program. The HTML source isn't very good: the month isn't even mentioned, but has to be inferred from the name of an image; ditto for the categories of the events (music, dance, etc.); and there isn't a lot of mark-up to distinguish, date, time, title and location. It would have been easier (indeed, unnecessary) with hcalendar mark-up…

Anyway, enjoy!

The current calendar was generated on August 18, after a few small corrections in the HTML pages.

I hope the Conseil Général doesn't mind. The Web pages didn't say that adaptation was allowed. I sent an e-mail but haven't heard back yet…

Bert Bos <bert at phonk.net>
Created 13 July 2009