4.8.2.4 Date/Time Start

Basic Definition | Description| | Example

Basic Definition

Property Name: DTSTART
Purpose: This property specifies when the calendar component begins.
Value Type: The default value type is DATE-TIME. The time value MUST be one of the forms defined for the DATE-TIME value type. The value type can be set to a DATE value type.
Property Parameters: Non-standard, value data type, time zone identifier property parameters can be specified on this property.
Conformance: This property can be specified in the "VEVENT", "VTODO", "VFREEBUSY", or "VTIMEZONE" calendar components.

Description

Within the "VEVENT" calendar component, this property defines the start date and time for the event. The property is REQUIRED in "VEVENT" calendar components. Events can have a start date/time but no end date/time. In that case, the event does not take up any time.

Within the "VFREEBUSY" calendar component, this property defines the start date and time for the free or busy time information. The time MUST be specified in UTC time.

Within the "VTIMEZONE" calendar component, this property defines the effective start date and time for a time zone specification. This property is REQUIRED within each STANDARD and DAYLIGHT part included in "VTIMEZONE" calendar components and MUST be specified as a local DATE-TIME without the "TZID" property parameter.

Format Definition

The property is defined by the following notation:

  dtstart    = "DTSTART" dtstparam ":" dtstval CRLF
  dtstparam  = *(

             ; the following are optional,
             ; but MUST NOT occur more than once

             (";" "VALUE" "=" ("DATE-TIME" / "DATE")) /
             (";" tzidparam) /

             ; the following is optional,
             ; and MAY occur more than once

               *(";" xparam)

             )



  dtstval    = date-time / date
  ;Value MUST match value type

Example

The following is an example of this property:

  DTSTART:19980118T073000Z

iCalendar specification excerpts TOC

Made with CSS (a note on style compatibility).

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This is a part of RFC 2445 iCalendar specification (1998-11), converted to XHTML by M.Kanzaki.
Status: first converted 2003-10-25, modified 2003-10-28. Exp.