[Tickets #14361] Re: Updating contacts on iOS9.3.1 does not transfer the contact picture to the server

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Ticket URL: https://bugs.horde.org/ticket/14361
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  Ticket             | 14361
  Updated By         | Michael Rubinsky <mrubinsk at horde.org>
  Summary            | Updating contacts on iOS9.3.1 does not transfer the
                     | contact picture to the server
  Queue              | Turba
  Version            | 4.2.14
  Type               | Bug
-State              | Unconfirmed
+State              | Assigned
  Priority           | 2. Medium
  Milestone          |
  Patch              |
-Owners             |
+Owners             | Michael Rubinsky
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Michael Rubinsky <mrubinsk at horde.org> (2016-05-11 13:06) wrote:

It looks like iOS broke picture handling (again). It was broken around  
6.1, fixed around 8.1, and looks like it's broken again. Here is a  
snippet of the contact data sent from the iOS client to the server:

2016-05-10T15:41:16+02:00 DEBUG: [6597] I      <Modify>
2016-05-10T15:41:16+02:00 DEBUG: [6597] I       <ServerEntryId>
2016-05-10T15:41:16+02:00 DEBUG: [6597] I         [55 bytes of content]
2016-05-10T15:41:16+02:00 DEBUG: [6597] I       </ServerEntryId>
2016-05-10T15:41:16+02:00 DEBUG: [6597] I       <Data>

<snip>

2016-05-10T15:41:16+02:00 DEBUG: [6597] I        <POOMCONTACTS:LastName>
2016-05-10T15:41:16+02:00 DEBUG: [6597] I          testenson
2016-05-10T15:41:16+02:00 DEBUG: [6597] I        </POOMCONTACTS:LastName>
2016-05-10T15:41:16+02:00 DEBUG: [6597] I        <POOMCONTACTS:Picture />
2016-05-10T15:41:16+02:00 DEBUG: [6597] I       </Data>

Note the <POOMCONTACTS:Picture /> line. That's an empty tag element,  
meaning it has no content. The client is telling the server that there  
is no picture data associated with this contact.

This is *really* bad, considering that it is also not sending any  
SUPPORTED properties - meaning that most likely your contact images  
will be wiped with ANY edit of the contact on the client.

The way to signify a property is removed varies depending on a few  
things such as if the client is sending SUPPORTED data that indicates  
what properties should be "ghosted" or not and if the Picture element  
is listed in that SUPPORTED data or not.

Since different versions of iOS do different combinations of these  
things (both correctly and incorrectly), it really isn't feasible to  
implement a workaround since this could make it impossible to delete a  
contact picture if desired, while the client would believe it WAS  
deleted.

On the other hand, since this leads to data loss on the server, it  
might be worth this inconvenience. I'll have to test some things out  
to see what we can do.