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276

answers:

1

I am building an app for Android 2.1 that provides notifications based on calendar events. But I'm aware there are issues with the Calendar API not being readily available / stable / whatever.

What I'd like to do is somehow communicate with the user's Google Calendar to get a list of tasks every few hours, or perhaps when the calendar is updated, and then store that data locally so they don't need to have an active internet connection at all times.

Then at a particular time, the notifcation event would occur.

Surely, someone must have determined a way to interface with Google Calendar? I'm sure there must be numerous apps and solutions available that connect to it already, and my users can use any interface they like for interacting with it, but I need to be able to read the data and store it locally.

Thanks!

+2  A: 

Your best bet for interfacing with Google Calendar is to use version 2 of the GData library. There are a few examples on that page on how to use the Picassa API with Android, but the Calendar APIs should be fairly similar to use.

Erich Douglass
Is this really the best we've got so far, then? An experimental API? I'm really surprised that Google hasn't given us a solid Android interface for their online services.
Brian Lacy
Unfortunately, yes. The other option is to use the Calendar's content provider, but since it's not part of the SDK, it can (and probably will) change at any time. I've used the v2 GData API and it's actually not too bad.
Erich Douglass
Thanks for your help Erich.
Brian Lacy