Single-event calendar actions do not download the available .ics file

[Ulbrec87]

Terms

• I have searched all open bug reports
• I agree to follow activist's Code of Conduct

Behavior

The frontend currently shows a calendar action for individual events in two places:

• The event About page.
• The event card tooltip/menu.

Both actions currently call an empty downloadCalendarEntry function, so selecting them has no effect.

The existing accessible label, “Download the calendar entry for this event”, indicates that these actions are intended to download the individual event rather than create a persistent calendar subscription.

The backend already exposes a public endpoint for exporting one event:

GET /v1/events/event_calendar?event_id=<UUID>

The endpoint returns an iCalendar file and provides a suggested filename through the Content-Disposition response header.

Selecting either action should request this endpoint using the selected event ID and download the returned .ics file. The filename should come from Content-Disposition when available, with a safe .ics fallback otherwise.

Both entry points should use a shared frontend implementation and follow the project’s existing public API proxy, error-handling, accessibility and localization patterns. Any temporary browser resources created for the download should also be cleaned up.

Since this is a static export for one event, “Add to calendar” may be more accurate than “Subscribe to event”. The final wording should be confirmed by the maintainers.

Scope

This issue only covers the two existing calendar actions for individual events.

Organization and group calendar actions should remain unchanged. Their export and subscription behavior was discussed separately in #1448 and PR #1483.

No backend changes are expected.

Acceptance criteria

• Both single-event actions download the .ics file for the correct event.
• Both entry points use the same shared implementation.
• The filename is read from Content-Disposition when available, with a safe fallback otherwise.
• Failed requests show accessible feedback using the project’s i18n system, without unhandled exceptions.
• Keyboard activation triggers only one download.
• Temporary browser resources are cleaned up.
• Relevant frontend tests are added.

Related work

• Subscribe to calendar feeds for organizations and groups via Google Cal/iCal #716: original calendar subscription/export feature
• Issue 716 #1276: added the existing frontend calendar actions
• Add functions to export .ics file with event information #1307: defined the .ics export work
• Added export event as .ics file #1313: implemented the single-event backend endpoint
• Expand .ics file export to work for all events for orgs and groups #1448 / PR Add bulk export to .ics file #1483: discussed organization and group calendar export separately

Contribution

I would be happy to implement this after confirmation from the maintainers.

[andrewtavis]

Thanks so much for the work here, @Ulbrec87! Really great to have you in the community :) Would you have interest in working on this?

[Ulbrec87]

Thanks so much for the work here, @Ulbrec87! Really great to have you in the community :) Would you have interest in working on this?

Thanks so much! Yes, I’d be happy to work on this. I’ll start looking into the implementation and will open a PR linked to this issue.

[lb1192176991-lab]

Submitted PR #2302 for this issue.

[Ulbrec87]

Hi @andrewtavis, sorry for the extra ping. I had already started working on the implementation while investigating the problem and preparing the issue, so I now have a fairly advanced local version.

I noticed that #2302 was opened in the meantime. Would you recommend that I continue with my implementation and open a PR, or should I stop working on this issue?

[andrewtavis]

@Ulbrec87, you'd be welcome to finalize your implementation and then we'll integrate one or both of them in :) Thanks for sending something along already, @lb1192176991-lab. We'll let @Ulbrec87 open something as well as the issue opener and also that I offered the issue before the PR :)