Google Calendar recurring Event hack

README.md

Google Calendar recurring events hack

There seems to be a synchronization issue on some Android devices. Any calendar app renders recurring events a couple hundred times. Pretty annoying, cause it gets slow as hell and my smartwatch constantly chokes on all the notifications. This little Python script transforms all recurring events within a two-year timespan to single event instances. Thus, it's hacky but it solves the issue.

Install

Go through the tutorial at https://developers.google.com/calendar/quickstart/python. As a last step call python transform.py.

Done!

google.py

from apiclient.discovery import build
from httplib2 import Http
from oauth2client import file, client, tools

SCOPES = 'https://www.googleapis.com/auth/calendar'
store = file.Storage('credentials.json')

try:
    creds = store.get()
except KeyError:
    pass

if not creds or creds.invalid:
    flow = client.flow_from_clientsecrets('client_secret.json', SCOPES)
    creds = tools.run_flow(flow, store)

calendar = build('calendar', 'v3', http=creds.authorize(Http()))

transform.py

from google import calendar
from copy import deepcopy

import datetime

def transform(recurringEvent):
    simpleEvent = deepcopy(recurringEvent)
    
    del simpleEvent['kind']
    del simpleEvent['etag']
    del simpleEvent['id']
    del simpleEvent['status']
    del simpleEvent['htmlLink']
    del simpleEvent['created']
    del simpleEvent['updated']
    del simpleEvent['creator']
    del simpleEvent['organizer']
    del simpleEvent['recurringEventId']
    del simpleEvent['originalStartTime']
    del simpleEvent['iCalUID']
    del simpleEvent['sequence']

    simpleEvent = calendar.events().insert(calendarId='primary', body=simpleEvent).execute()
    
    if simpleEvent:
        calendar.events().delete(calendarId='primary', eventId=recurringEvent['id']).execute()
        start = simpleEvent['start'].get('dateTime', simpleEvent['start'].get('date'))
        print(' ✅', start, simpleEvent['summary'])
    else:
        print(' ❗', start, simpleEvent['summary'])

pageToken = None

todayMinusOneYear = datetime.datetime.now() - datetime.timedelta(days=365)
todayPlusOneYear = datetime.datetime.now() + datetime.timedelta(days=365)

timeMin = todayMinusOneYear.isoformat() + 'Z' # 'Z' indicates UTC time
timeMax = todayPlusOneYear.isoformat() + 'Z' # 'Z' indicates UTC time

while True:
    data = calendar.events().list(
            calendarId='primary', singleEvents=True, pageToken=pageToken,
            maxResults=100, timeMin=timeMin, timeMax=timeMax
        ).execute()

    events = data.get('items', [])
    pageToken = data.get('nextPageToken')
    
    if events:
        for event in events:
            start = event['start'].get('dateTime', event['start'].get('date'))
            print('   ', start, event['summary'], ' ' * 120, '\r', end='')

            if 'recurringEventId' in event:
                transform(event)

    if not pageToken:
        break