Availability Calendar

The Calendar plugin turns an iCal file (.ics) into an availability calendar on your site: a month grid that shows which days are booked and which are free. It's made for photographers who take bookings, and for holiday rentals.

📅 From Any Calendar

Reads standard iCal (RFC 5545) files, as exported by Google Calendar, Outlook, Apple Calendar or booking platforms.

🌙 Days or Nights

Mark whole days as booked, or show arrival and departure days with diagonals, like a holiday rental calendar.

🌍 Your Language

Month names follow your site language, and every label can be renamed.

Installation

The Standalone edition has the Calendar plugin and the Lumina.Calendar theme extension built in, so there's nothing to install.

In the Full edition, install both from the bundled packages:

revela plugin install Calendar
revela theme install Lumina.Calendar

The plugin builds the calendar data; the theme extension renders it as a month grid.

Creating a Calendar Page

Put your .ics file into a page folder, for example source/availability/bookings.ics. To download it automatically from a calendar URL, use Calendar Feeds.
Create source/availability/_index.revela:
```
+++
title = "Availability"
template = "calendar/page"
calendar.source = "bookings.ics"
calendar.months = 12
+++
Green days are free. Get in touch to book a session.
```
Or let Revela create it: revela create page calendar availability --title "Availability" --source bookings.ics (--source is required).
Build your site:
```
revela generate all
```

The Markdown below the front matter appears above the calendar.

Front Matter Options

Field	Default	Description
`calendar.source`	(required)	The `.ics` file, relative to the page folder. It must be inside the source folder
`calendar.months`	`12`	Number of months to show, starting with the current month
`calendar.mode`	`"days"`	`"days"` or `"nights"` (see below)
`calendar.locale`	site language	Language for month and day names, for example `"de"`
`calendar.labels.booked`	theme text (`"Booked"`, de: `"Belegt"`)	Label for booked days
`calendar.labels.free`	theme text (`"Free"`, de: `"Frei"`)	Label for free days
`calendar.labels.arrive`	theme text (`"Arrival"`, de: `"Anreise"`)	Label for arrival days (nights mode)
`calendar.labels.depart`	theme text (`"Departure"`, de: `"Abreise"`)	Label for departure days (nights mode)
`data.calendar`	`"calendar.json"`	Name of the generated data file the page reads. Use a plain file name ending in `.json`, without folders

The site language comes from language in site.json (default en). An unknown locale falls back to neutral formatting and prints a warning. Labels you don't set are shown in the site language by the theme (see Theme Language); set them only to use your own wording.

Days or Nights

days (default): each event blocks whole days, from its start date up to the day before its end date. Good for photo sessions and events.
nights: an event's start date is the arrival day and its end date the departure day. Both are shown as half-booked diagonals, so a changeover day (one guest leaves, the next arrives) is still visible. Good for holiday rentals.

Example of a German holiday-rental calendar:

+++
title = "Verfügbarkeit"
template = "calendar/page"
calendar.source = "bookings.ics"
calendar.mode = "nights"
calendar.months = 12
calendar.locale = "de"
calendar.labels.booked = "belegt"
calendar.labels.free = "frei"
calendar.labels.arrive = "Anreise"
calendar.labels.depart = "Abreise"
+++

How It Works

revela generate scan finds every page whose template starts with calendar/.
The calendar step (part of generate all, right after scan) reads each page's .ics file and writes .revela/calendar/<page>/calendar.json (or the name set in data.calendar).
revela generate pages renders the month grid with the Lumina.Calendar extension.

Past days are dimmed and today is highlighted, based on the day you build the site. Rebuild regularly (for example with a scheduled CI job) so the calendar stays current.

Styling

Lumina.Calendar marks each day with a CSS class you can restyle in your own theme override (see Themes):

Class	Look	Used in
`free`	Green tint	Both modes
`booked`	Red tint	Both modes
`arrive`	Diagonal, free → booked	Nights mode
`depart`	Diagonal, booked → free	Nights mode
`past`	Dimmed	Both modes
`today`	Accent outline	Both modes

CLI Commands

Command	Description
`revela generate calendar`	Build calendar data for all calendar pages
`revela generate all`	Full pipeline (includes the calendar step)
`revela clean calendar`	Delete the generated calendar data files from the cache
`revela check calendar`	Check that every calendar page's `.ics` file is inside the source folder, exists and is valid
`revela create page calendar`	Create a calendar page

Troubleshooting

Run revela check calendar (or just revela check). It reports a missing .ics file, one outside the source folder, or one that isn't valid iCal data, with the page it belongs to and how to fix it. The calendar step stops the build for the same problems, and for a data.calendar value that isn't a plain .json file name.