iCalMaker2: moving code from iCalMaker

With the data model of the iCalendar data standard (rfc2445) complete the next thing to do was move the old code from iCalMaker over to the new iCalMaker2.

Code in iCalMaker can be divided two main groups:

1. Code that ‘talks’ to the interface, i.e. what the user sees…
2. Code that does the ‘grunt work’, i.e. the code that processes the iCal data from ical files, comma/tab delimited files, does all the exporting etc….

The code in group 1 is not really needed any more as Xcode 3.0 uses ‘data-binding’ to link the data to the interface. This makes life a lot easier.

The code in group 2 is a different story. This code is the ‘guts’ of the program. It does all the work. Most of it can be moved over with very little change, just the odd ‘tweak’ here and there to tie the data generated by the code, to the data-model, and hence to the interface. This is fiddly, but can be done.

The first sections of code to be moved over were the methods for parsing the iCal files. This needed a re-write of some sections so the data could map to core-data model. This has been done, and had been successfully tested. In addition, new code has been written directly read from iCal. More on that later….