ical-schedule

n8n community node: today's (or the next few days') appointments from an iCal feed. Dependency-free port of the trmnl-calendar PHP iCal parser.

Package Information

Released: this month

Downloads: 0 weekly / 0 monthly

Latest Version: 0.1.1

Author: Josh Lamb

Available Nodes

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iCal Schedule

Read an iCal (.ics) feed and list the appointments for today or a range of days

Documentation

n8n-nodes-ical-schedule

An n8n community node that reads an iCal (.ics) feed and returns the appointments for today, tomorrow, the next N days, or a custom range. Its output includes a sentence ready to be read aloud, which makes it a drop-in back end for an ElevenLabs agent tool.

The parser is a TypeScript port of the PHP iCal parser used by trmnl-calendar. That parser is itself based on seebz's gist. The port also includes the day grouping from trmnl-calendar's index.php. It has no runtime dependencies.

Using it

Parameter	Notes
Source	Feed URL (https:// or webcal://) or iCal Text from an earlier node (defaults to `{{ $json.data }}`).
Range	Today · Tomorrow · Next X Days · Custom (start date + days).
Output	Summary (one item, ready for a voice agent) · One Item per Day (trmnl-calendar shape) · One Item per Event.
Options → Time Zone	Decides what "today" is and how times are shown. Empty = the workflow's time zone.
Options → Include All-Day Events, Skip Cancelled Events, Include Descriptions, Time Format (12h/24h)
Options → Match Original PHP Output Exactly	Turns off every bug fix listed below. Only for comparing results.

Summary output for "Today":

{
  "timeZone": "America/New_York",
  "startDate": "2026-10-13",
  "days": 1,
  "count": 3,
  "date": "2026-10-13",
  "label": "today, Tuesday, October 13",
  "events": [
    { "title": "Weekly standup", "allDay": false, "time": "9:00 AM", "endTime": "9:30 AM",
      "start": "2026-10-13T09:00:00-04:00", "end": "2026-10-13T09:30:00-04:00", "uid": "..." }
  ],
  "summary": "3 appointments today, Tuesday, October 13: 9:00 AM, Weekly standup; 2:30 PM, Smith consult; 4:00 PM, Weekly review. All day: Office closed."
}

count is the number of timed appointments. All-day events are listed, but they aren't counted.

ElevenLabs hookup

Import examples/elevenlabs-todays-appointments.workflow.json (Webhook → iCal Schedule → Respond to Webhook).
Webhook node: create a Header Auth credential, e.g. X-Api-Key with a long random value.
iCal Schedule node: paste your secret iCal URL and check the time zone.
Activate (publish) the workflow and copy the production URL.
In ElevenLabs, add a server tool (webhook):
- Name: get_todays_appointments
- Method: POST; URL: the production URL
- Header: X-Api-Key = an ElevenLabs secret ({{secret__...}})
- Description: "Returns today's appointments. Call it when the caller asks what's on the schedule today, whether a time is free today, or what's next."
System prompt: "When asked about today's schedule, call get_todays_appointments and say the summary naturally. Don't read out JSON or end times unless asked."

You can also use the same workflow to pre-load the schedule before a call starts and pass summary in as a dynamic variable.

Fidelity to the PHP parser

The port follows ical.php method by method, and index.php's getEvents for the day grouping. With Match Original PHP Output Exactly on, it was checked against the real PHP (PHP 8.3) on:

the hand-written edge-case calendars
80 randomly generated calendars covering daily, weekly with BYDAY and INTERVAL, monthly BYDAY like 2TU/-1FR, BYMONTHDAY, yearly, COUNT, UNTIL, EXDATE, same-day RECURRENCE-ID overrides, UTC and floating times, all-day and multi-day events
4 time zones and every day from Jan 2026 to Jan 2027

Result: 31,680 day checks and 58,240 event placements, all identical. Re-run it with npm run test:parity (needs php-cli; it downloads ical.php itself).

Bugs fixed by default

Each of these was confirmed in the original PHP. Each is a no-op for calendars the PHP already handled correctly.

#	PHP behaviour	Fixed behaviour
1	`TZID` ignored: a 3 PM Berlin event shows at 3 PM in New York.	Converted to your time zone (9 AM).
2	`EXDATE:a,b` only skips the first date.	All listed dates are skipped.
3	Never-ending rules stop after 500 occurrences (a daily series started more than 500 days ago disappears).	Expanded up to the requested range.
4	`UNTIL` is exclusive and compared against midnight, so the last instance is dropped or an extra one appears.	Inclusive, compared against the real start time (RFC 5545).
5	An instance moved to a different day also still shows on its original day.	The original slot is removed.
6	A recurring all-day event on a DST-change day becomes a "00:00–23:00" timed event, and multi-day all-day events lose their last day across DST.	Stays all-day. Timed events keep their real elapsed duration, as in PHP.
7	Monthly "last Friday"-style rules skip a month after a 29th–31st.	No skipped months.
8	Lines folded with LF-only or tabs aren't unfolded, and `\,` `\;` `\n` aren't unescaped.	Unfolded and unescaped.
9	No `DTEND` produces garbage dates.	All-day lasts one day; timed is zero-length.
10	`STATUS:CANCELLED` events are listed.	Skipped (an option).

Still not supported (same as the PHP)

These rule parts are not supported: BYSETPOS, yearly BYMONTH/BYDAY rules (e.g. "4th Thursday of November"), HOURLY and finer frequencies, RDATE, WKST (weeks start Monday), and DURATION instead of DTEND.

A timed event spanning several days is shown as all-day on each day except the last, exactly as trmnl-calendar does.

Development

npm install
npm test               # build + targeted tests for each fix
npm run test:parity    # bug-for-bug comparison with the PHP original
npm pack               # produces the .tgz for Option B

License

The parser is a derivative of ical.php from trmnl-calendar and seebz's gist. Neither states a license, so package.json says UNLICENSED for now. Before publishing publicly (Option A), check with those authors or keep the package private. Option B and a private registry are unaffected.

ical-scheduleInstall