Using Supabase to Ingest iCal Feeds and Populate a Booking Table

screenshot of EazyAL Portugal

I am busy building a short term rental management tool *EazyAL* and one of the features in my roadmap involves importing reservations from a platform like Airbnb, without the platforms API.

In this guide, I will walk through how to use Supabase to fetch an iCal link, parse it, and store the events in a bookings table.

The steps :

1. Fetch an iCal (.ics) file from a URL
2. Parse the calendar data into structured events
3. Store or upsert those events into a Supabase table
4. Schedule this to run automatically

Step 1: Set Up Your Supabase Table

Start by creating a bookings table, for example :

sql
create table bookings (
 id uuid primary key default gen_random_uuid(),
 external_id text unique,
 title text,
 start_time timestamp,
 end_time timestamp,
 source text,
 created_at timestamp default now()
);

Ensure to include external_id because each iCal event has a UID. We’ll use it to avoid duplicates when syncing.

Step 2: Create a Supabase Edge Function

The Supabase Edge Function is used to fetch and process the iCal feed.

Install the Supabase CLI if you haven’t:

Step 3: Parse the iCal Feed

Inside your function, install an iCal parser:

npm install node-ical

Then implement the sync logic:

ts
import { serve } from "https://deno.land/std/http/server.ts";
import ical from "npm:node-ical";
import { createClient } from "https://esm.sh/@supabase/supabase-js";
const supabase = createClient(
 Deno.env.get("SUPABASE_URL")!,
 Deno.env.get("SUPABASE_SERVICE_ROLE_KEY")!
);
serve(async () => {
 try {
 const ICAL_URL = "https://example.com/calendar.ics";
// Fetch and parse iCal
 const data = await ical.async.fromURL(ICAL_URL);
const events = Object.values(data).filter(
 (event: any) => event.type === "VEVENT"
 );
const bookings = events.map((event: any) => ({
 external_id: event.uid,
 title: event.summary,
 start_time: event.start,
 end_time: event.end,
 source: "ical",
 }));
// Upsert into Supabase
 const { error } = await supabase
 .from("bookings")
 .upsert(bookings, { onConflict: "external_id" });
if (error) throw error;
return new Response(
 JSON.stringify({ message: "Sync successful", count: bookings.length }),
 { headers: { "Content-Type": "application/json" } }
 );
 } catch (err) {
 return new Response(
 JSON.stringify({ error: err.message }),
 { status: 500 }
 );
 }
});

Step 4: Automate the Sync

To keep your bookings up to date, you can:

Option A: Use Supabase Scheduled Functions (if enabled)

Option B: Use an external cron service

Handling Cancellations & Updates

iCal feeds don’t always explicitly delete events. To handle this:

Store a last_seen timestamp Remove events not present in the latest sync

Final Thoughts

Using Supabase with iCal feeds is a powerful way to unify external booking systems into a single source of truth. With just an Edge Function and a parser, you can build a reliable sync pipeline in under an hour. Oh and if you want to see my tool see alojamento local software.