[horde] Wrong Birthday entry in Contacts ActiveSync & Andoird ICS 4.0.2

[Michael J Rubinsky]

Quoting Hanns Mattes <hanns at hannsmattes.de>:

> Hi,
>
> Am 21.03.2012 02:32, schrieb Michael J Rubinsky:
>>
>> Quoting Hanns Mattes <hanns at hannsmattes.de>:
>>
>
>>> sync.log is showing the "wrong" date.
>>
>> What do you mean by the "wrong" date? The sync log should show the date
>> converted to UTC.
>
> If I create a contact with a birthdate of 01.04.1980, sync.log shows:
>
>
> mail:~ # tail -f /var/log/sync.log | grep 1980
> 2012-03-21T11:47:05+01:00 DEBUG: O         1980-03-31T23:00:00.000Z

This is the correct date value for a user in a UTC+1 timezone.

> which is resulting in a birthdate of 31.03.1980 on my synced smartphone.

It turns out this is a problem with some ActiveSync clients. The  
specification says that the Birthday and Anniversary fields are of  
type DateTime. DateTime fields must *always* be sent and received in  
UTC and the device is supposed to convert from UTC to the local device  
timezone. It seems as though Android neglects to do the UTC->local tz  
conversion on receiving the contact. Additionally, when it sends a new  
contact it seems to ALWAYS use a time of 06:00:00 UTC, regardless of  
the device's timezone.

Bottom line, this is a client issue outside of Horde's control. A web  
search turns up all kinds of complaints regarding ActiveSync birthdays  
with different servers/clients. It seems as though everyone implements  
this differently.

If/when I get time I will fire up an old Exchange Server VM and see  
what the behavior is when using a real exchange server - we should try  
to emulate that behavior.
-- 
mike

The Horde Project (www.horde.org)
mrubinsk at horde.org
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