ScheduleView file-based saving/loading

[Rob]

I'm looking to load/save the appointments to a local file rather than a database.

I found a forum post from 2015 which seems a bit out of date.

Is there any facility for this and if not what is the suggested route? I don't want to ship a database source within my application.

Many thanks

[Stenly]

Hello Rob,

May I ask if it would be possible to take a look at the Ical demo from our Demos application, which demonstrates how to import and export appointments to the iCalendar type (file with .ics extension), which is used in calendars such as Google and Outlook? 

Additionally, you could also take a look at the following article from our documentation, which covers the import/export to ICalendar format:

WPF ScheduleView - Import/Export to ICalendar - Telerik UI for WPF

With this being said, I hope the provided information will be of help to you.

Regards,
Stenly
Progress Telerik

[Rob]

This works fine but....

My appointments are set up via a viewmodel:

 

<business:ScheduleViewModel x:Key="ViewModel" />

                                    <telerik:RadScheduleView
                                        x:Name="ScheduleCalendar"
                                        Grid.Row="1"
                                        AppointmentsSource="{Binding Appointments}"
                                        DataContext="{StaticResource ViewModel}">

 

How do I set the viewmodel content equal to the appointments loaded through the example load method (ics)?

 

Many many thanks!

[Stenly]

Hello Rob,

I created a sample project that uses some of the logic of the ICal example, which is present in the same view model where the collection that contains the appointments is present.

With this being said, could you give the attached project a try?

[Rob]

Perfect thank you Stenly! 👍

[Rob]

One thing that doesn't seem to persist. When I load the appointments back in, the colours do not show up in the appointments - so the backgrounds are all the accent colour and not the individual task colour?

[Stenly]

Hello Rob,

I tested this using the approach from the AppointmentColorBasedOnResource SDK example to color the appointments in combination with the import/export logic to/from ICalendar format, however, I was unable to reproduce this behavior.

I attached the test application, so, could you give it a try and let me know if I am missing something of importance?

[Rob]

I have zipped up the solution and created a support ticket with my code to see if we can get to the bottom of this.

[Stenly]

Hello Rob,

I provided an answer to this question in the support ticket, however, I will share the reason and solution to this here as well.

The observed behavior is expected, as the export logic of the control does not save the color of the categories. It only saves the category and display names. The import logic thus does not correctly apply the category brush when importing. Generally, this is also not supported by the ICalendar format, as it is intended to be interoperable across systems. However, this requirement can be achieved with a bit of custom code for checking the category name and applying a color based on it. 

To do so, extend the AppointmentCalendarImporter and override the ApplyAdditionalData method. In it, you could set the CategoryBrush property of the Category object of the generated Appointment instance on import. To get the correct color of each category, you could pass the RadScheduleView control.

The following code snippets showcase this suggestion's implementation:

public class CustomAppointmentCalendarImporter : AppointmentCalendarImporter
{
    private RadScheduleView scheduleView;

    public CustomAppointmentCalendarImporter(RadScheduleView scheduleView)
        : base(false)
    {
        this.scheduleView = scheduleView;
    }
    public CustomAppointmentCalendarImporter(bool ignoreParseErrors)
        : base(ignoreParseErrors)
    {
    }

    protected override IAppointment ApplyAdditionalData(IAppointment appointment, CalObject calObject)
    {
        Appointment appointmentWithAdditionalData = (Appointment)base.ApplyAdditionalData(appointment, calObject);

        if (appointmentWithAdditionalData.Category != null)
        {
            ((Category)appointmentWithAdditionalData.Category).CategoryBrush = this.scheduleView.CategoriesSource
                .OfType<Category>()
                .FirstOrDefault(c => c.CategoryName.Contains(appointmentWithAdditionalData.Category.CategoryName))?
                .CategoryBrush;
        }

        return appointmentWithAdditionalData;
    }
}

//On import action

var importer = new CustomAppointmentCalendarImporter(this.MyScheduleView);

With this being said, I hope the provided information will be of help to you.

[Rob]

Perfect response and all worked excellently.

[Stenly]

Hello Rob,

I am happy to hear that the proposed suggestion was of help to you and that you took the time to let us know.