CalDAV birthday calendar: modifying birthdays should return 403 instead of 404

[rfc2822]

Currently, modifying birthday events in the birthday calendar (the one which is automatically created and filled with contact birthdays by Nextcloud) over CalDAV PUT returns HTTP 404 with this message:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<d:error xmlns:d="DAV:" xmlns:s="http://sabredav.org/ns">
  <s:exception>Sabre\DAV\Exception\NotFound</s:exception>
  <s:message>Node with name 'contacts-pas-id-565B107600000032.vcf.ics' could not be found</s:message>
</d:error>

(Reference: https://forums.bitfire.at/post/10439)

I think it would be better to return 403 Forbidden on PUT, because the iCalendar resource exists when downloading it. 404 would mean that there is no representation for this resource. With 403, clients and users can see that the resource is available, but cannot be modified.

[nextcloud-bot]

GitMate.io thinks possibly related issues are https://github.com/nextcloud/server/issues/8766 (Caldav ), https://github.com/nextcloud/server/issues/5077 (Propatch to birthday calendar returns 404), https://github.com/nextcloud/server/issues/8529 (NC 13: disable birthday calendar returns 302 with no feedback), https://github.com/nextcloud/server/issues/3003 (Disable birthday contacts calendar generation for user), and https://github.com/nextcloud/server/pull/10761 ([stable13] Fix call to OC.generateUrl for caldav birthday calendar on/off).

[skjnldsv]

@georgehrke

[blizzz]

still an issue?

[szaimen]

Hi, please update to 24.0.8 or better 25.0.2 and report back if it fixes the issue. Thank you!

[ArnyminerZ]

Still happening on 25.0.4. To reproduce:

1. Create the file event.ics with this contents:

   BEGIN:VCALENDAR
   VERSION:2.0
   PRODID:-//ical.marudot.com//iCal Event Maker
   CALSCALE:GREGORIAN
   BEGIN:VTIMEZONE
   TZID:Europe/London
   LAST-MODIFIED:20201011T015911Z
   TZURL:http://tzurl.org/zoneinfo-outlook/Europe/London
   X-LIC-LOCATION:Europe/London
   BEGIN:DAYLIGHT
   TZNAME:BST
   TZOFFSETFROM:+0000
   TZOFFSETTO:+0100
   DTSTART:19700329T010000
   RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=3;BYDAY=-1SU
   END:DAYLIGHT
   BEGIN:STANDARD
   TZNAME:GMT
   TZOFFSETFROM:+0100
   TZOFFSETTO:+0000
   DTSTART:19701025T020000
   RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=10;BYDAY=-1SU
   END:STANDARD
   END:VTIMEZONE
   BEGIN:VEVENT
   DTSTAMP:20230321T093324Z
   UID:[email protected]
   DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20230321
   DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20230322
   SUMMARY:Testing Event
   DESCRIPTION:This is a testing event.
   END:VEVENT
   END:VCALENDAR
   

2. Run this command on the same directory than the file:

   curl https://<server>/remote.php/dav/calendars/<username>/contact_birthdays/ -u <username>:<password> -X PUT -d @event.ics
   

   Note: Replace <server>, <username> and <password> accordingly.
3. The response given by the server is:

   <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
   <d:error xmlns:d="DAV:" xmlns:s="http://sabredav.org/ns">
     <s:exception>Sabre\DAV\Exception\NotFound</s:exception>
     <s:message>Node with name 'contact_birthdays' could not be found</s:message>
   </d:error>
   

This is misleading, and is technically not true. As stated by @rfc2822, the returned error should be 403 Forbidden.

[devvv4ever]

Short addition: If possible, it would be helpful if the error message could be more precise. Suggestion: "Contact birthdays is read-only. Please edit the contact itself to change this resource".