1853530 - ics-import bug

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Thunderbird :: Untriaged, defect)

Description

[wulfman74]

Attachment: mytischtennis_de_kalender_export_2023-09-16.ics

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:109.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/117.0

Steps to reproduce:

Tried to import *.ics

Actual results:

Got this message:
"No importable entries detected in the calendar file".

I ran your ics file through an ics validator, after which I didn't notice any things on normal inspection. The validator also confirms RFC conformance. So what could be the cause?

The error console then put me on the track. When parsing the ics file, an 'uncaught exception' occurs on certain lines of the ics file. Primarily this is a bug in the code of Thunderbird, which should be able to handle it, but unfortunately fails because of it. Secondary there are line breaks in the file where there should be none.

Expected results:

No Import of the attached *.ics in calendar

Comment 1

[bliss2u]

Same here, Thunderbird 115.3.1 on a Linux box.
The last time (last year in December) I imported the ics file it worked like a charm.
Error message the same: "No importable entries detected in the calendar file".

Is there a way to see what is actually behind that error message?!?
Thanks

Comment 2

[bliss2u]

Have found some stuff....
Through Ctrl-Shift-J (error console):
Complains about DTSTART-entry:
Entry complained about is as follows:
DTSTART;TZID=Europe/Zurich:20231023
... without the time specification.

Entry as follows works:
DTSTART;TZID=Europe/Zurich:20231023T170000

or the following works too:
DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20231023

Looks to me as if older versions of thunderbird were more tolerant to leave time away if not given....

what now?

Comment 3

[Mars]

Hello,
I'm encountering the same issue, and it worked before (probably before 115?). I could reproduce on latest version of Thunderbird (115.5.0) on MacOS and Linux.
Here are the errors I get in the console log, when importing an ics file (and getting the No importable entries detected in the calendar file error):

Error: invalid date-time value: "2023-10-21T00::" Ical.jsm:6044:13
    fromDateTimeString resource:///modules/calendar/Ical.jsm:6044
    fromString resource:///modules/calendar/Ical.jsm:6100
    decorate resource:///modules/calendar/Ical.jsm:828
    _decorate resource:///modules/calendar/Ical.jsm:3080
    _hydrateValue resource:///modules/calendar/Ical.jsm:3063
    getValues resource:///modules/calendar/Ical.jsm:3231
    propertyIterator resource:///modules/CalICSService.jsm:486
    next self-hosted:1382
    getNextProperty resource:///modules/CalICSService.jsm:507
    icalProperty resource:///modules/calendar/utils/calIteratorUtils.jsm:166
    next self-hosted:1382
    setItemBaseFromICS resource:///components/calItemBase.js:931
    set icalComponent resource:///modules/CalEvent.jsm:162
    run resource:///modules/CalIcsParser.jsm:260
    submit resource:///modules/CalIcsParser.jsm:307
    processIcalComponent resource:///modules/CalIcsParser.jsm:68
    parseString resource:///modules/CalIcsParser.jsm:153
    parseFromStream resource:///modules/CalIcsParser.jsm:168
    importFromStream resource:///modules/CalIcsImportExport.jsm:33
    parseIcsFile resource:///modules/CalendarFileImporter.jsm:59
    _showItems chrome://messenger/content/aboutImport.js:1110
    AsyncFunctionNext self-hosted:852

which then seems to lead to

mail.import: Error: noItemsFound
    parseIcsFile resource:///modules/CalendarFileImporter.jsm:61
    _showItems chrome://messenger/content/aboutImport.js:1110
CalendarFileImporter.jsm:64:20
    parseIcsFile resource:///modules/CalendarFileImporter.jsm:64
    _showItems chrome://messenger/content/aboutImport.js:1110

and finally

Uncaught (in promise) Error: noItemsFound
    parseIcsFile resource:///modules/CalendarFileImporter.jsm:61
    _showItems chrome://messenger/content/aboutImport.js:1110
2 CalendarFileImporter.jsm:61:15

This is a big issue for users of the calendar, so I hope we can get it fixed very soon :)

Comment 4

[Mars]

I found the culprit, DTSTART and DTEND were formatted as follows:

DTSTART;TZID=Europe/Rome:20231120T00
DTEND;TZID=Europe/Rome:20231120T00

The huge issue is that Thunderbird fails the .ics import completely instead of just ignoring only this single faulty event (silently or just by displaying a discrete error message). Gnome Calendar or Apple Calendar just ignore silently this event, which I think is a way better and robust behavior.