[dev] Re: Publishing calendar from Sunbird

[Roel Gloudemans]

Chuck, thanx for the info. I will code this for Kronolith to start 
with. I started working for a new customer today. Until Friday I have 
very limited access to the Internet (or time), but I'll start coding 
this then. (And if all goes well there may even be some results then)

Cheers,
Roel.

Quoting Chuck Hagenbuch <chuck at horde.org>:

> Quoting Roel Gloudemans <roel at gloudemans.info>:
>
>> We can download the Kronolith calendars from Horde to Sunbird now, but
>> publishing is not there yet. I'm willing to to some work on it, but
>> need some confirmation that I'm doing the right thing.
>
> Great!
>
>> vCal/iCal has support for the UID attribute. When you subscribe sunbird
>> to a kronolith calendar, the UID is exported to Sunbird and sunbird
>> actually stores it. It is also sent back when publishing the calendar
>> to Horde. Subscribing/publishing can be handled through the existing
>> import/export methods.
>>
>> First step should be to add an 'overwrite' option to the import
>> methods. If a UID from an imported event already exists within the
>> database; that event will be overwritten (this should be fairly easy to
>> implement; the overwrite option should also be offered as a
>> choice/preference for manual imports). This would all depend on the
>> handling of the UID attribute by the various clients. Does anyone have
>> experience with this?
>
> I would say that import should simply overwrite, ALWAYS, if an existing
> UID is found. That would be more consistent with how UIDs are handled
> for syncing, etc.
>
>> If you now manually import you Sunbird calendar, existing items will be
>> changed appropriately and new items will be added. However, items
>> deleted in Sunbird will not dissappear. The deletion of items is a
>> tricky thing to handle. I'm not really sure we should even try to solve
>> it with such a loosly coupled connection.
>
> If Sunbird is simply publishing an iCal file, there'll be no
> notification of deletions like there would be in a true sync, so the
> only option here is a "delete before import" option like Turba now has,
> to consider the published iCal file the only valid events and to delete
> all others. Obviously not a default. :)
>
>> So in short
>> 1) Is the UID attribute "stable enough" across clients
>
> Should be. If not, clients are broken.
>
>> 2) Is using the existing import/export routines the best way to 
>> approach this
>
> Definitely.
>
>> 3) What should be do with item deletion
>
> See above. We could try to come up with some sort of backup scheme
> (storing dated .ics files in VFS before emptying a calendar?) if there
> are concerns here.
>
>> 4) Can we use this scheme also for Nag?
>
> Should be able to, yes.
>
> -chuck
>
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> Quincy Adams
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