Adding events in bulk to Google Calendar API with PHP - php

Question

What is the best way I could add possibly 10,000 to 20,000 events at once to a Google Calendar with PHP?
If I try adding them separately I get a "limit exceeded" error far before the daily max.
I've also been looking at importing ICAL/ICS files but I also can't seem to find a function for this besides the calendar subscriptions. Calendar Subscriptions are great but I need to have almost "real-time" updates in my calendars when an event gets changed and it's unclear when calendar subscriptions get updated this could take as much as a day from the initial change in the ICS file.

Answer 1

Need to use Batch Requests. A batch request consists of multiple API calls combined into one HTTP request. Batch processing is a known feature request and is actively worked on. Read the following article about it: https://developers.google.com/google-apps/calendar/batch
See my multipleInsert function for example:
class My_google_calendar
{
...
/** Add single Event for Student */
function addEvent($lesson, $instructor, $return_request = false, $enable_attendees = false)
{
$calendar = $this->getGoogleCalendar(); // get calendar service variable
$lesson_from = date(DATE_RFC3339, $lesson->from);
$lesson_to = date(DATE_RFC3339, $lesson->from + $lesson->duration);
$event = new Google_Service_Calendar_Event();
$event->setSummary('Lesson with student: '$lesson->student_full_name);
$start = new Google_Service_Calendar_EventDateTime();
$start->setDateTime($lesson_from);
$start->setTimeZone($this->getGoogleCalendarTimeZone());
$event->setStart($start);
$end = new Google_Service_Calendar_EventDateTime();
$end->setDateTime($lesson_to);
$end->setTimeZone($this->getGoogleCalendarTimeZone());
$event->setEnd($end);
$event->setColorId(4);
$description = "...";
$event->setDescription($description);
if (isset($student->email) && $enable_attendees) {
$attendee1 = new Google_Service_Calendar_EventAttendee();
$attendee1->setResponseStatus('needsAction');
$attendee1->setEmail($student->email);
$attendees = array($attendee1);
$event->setAttendees($attendees);
}
$createdEvent = $this->calendar->events->insert($this->calendar_id, $event, array('fields' => 'id'));
return $return_request ? $createdEvent : $createdEvent->getId();
}
/** Push group of events to the Calendar */
function multipleInsert ($lessons, $instructor)
{
$this->use_batch = true;
$this->client->setUseBatch($this->use_batch);
$batch = new Google_Http_Batch($this->client);
foreach($lessons as $time => $lesson) {
$lesson = array_shift($group['lessons']);
$req = $this->addEvent($lesson, $instructor, true);
$batch->add($req, $time);
}
}
$results = $batch->execute();
return $results;
}
}