CardDav (contacts) support

arubislander

@Thatoo You raise some valid points and some of them deserve to be answered, but asking this to be done in another thread is not the way forums work. How is everyone who ends up here, wondering why your questions are not addressed, to know what other thread they are being addressed at? The natural way in forums is to answer in the same thread.

Now, I understand your frustration. Here is a project that encourages participation and user input. So you give your input as to what is important to your (and lots of people you know their) use case. And then years go by and nothing seems to have been done about it.

But what few seem to appreciate sufficiently are the challenges that are being met by the core developers. I will not rehash the history of the project that brought it to where it is now. I will only say that what the team is trying to accomplish is to bring all the underlying technology of the OS up to versions of the software that are supported by upstream Ubuntu in an effort to lessen the maintenance burden for the UT Team and thereby freeing up resources to tackle other features.

Also lots of effort is poured (more and more by community members and not so much by core devs) into bringing UT to a wider range of devices. This is a good thing, because more devices means it is more likely that the project comes to the attention of developers who are able to help out with features such as CardDav.

We must remember that this is not a project being built by a team of developers that can dedicate their full time to it. Most of the work is done by volunteers who work on what they like, when they can. That is always difficult to manage. Trust me when I say, it is not that the devs thinks CardDav support is unimportant. It is just that no one has stepped up to solve it in a way that integrates nicely with the rest of the system.

We all need to understand that we not only need people to test, and make bug reports or feature requests, we also need people to pick these up and implement solutions and features. So maybe if you know anyone who might have the skills, or be interested in developing the skills to contribute this feature to Ubuntu Touch, get them in touch with me, and I will see if I can get them connected to someone who can help them do exactly that. How does that sound?

We need to remember that this is a young Open Source project, where the surest (and possibly the only) way to get the feature you care about implemented is to be an active force in getting it implemented.

poVoq

It was mentioned during one of the last Q&A's that OTR-13 will be all about merging stuff that was less important than the Mir update in OTR-12. So I have hope that CardDAV is one of those features that seems almost there but needs to be merged into the system. Same for the qtwebengine update that is equally requested a lot.

I guess the PinePhone/Tab is binding too many developer resources instead of adding new developers (for now at least)

Thatoo

Thank you @arubislander for this clear answer.

Thatoo

I have tried, with the help I could find here and there, to make a script to sync only our contacts to nextcloud, see below one of the version that I think should be working.

Unfortunately, all my attempt failed. I always get the same error : [ERROR] error code from SyncEvolution fatal error (local, status 10500) : no such datastore(s): NextcloudContactDatastore

Any idea why do I get this error and how to fix it? How to improve the script?
Cheers to all,

#!/bin/bash
# It is script to sync contacts between my Nexus 5 with UBports ubuntu touch OTA 12 and a nextcloud server
# --------------- [ Server ] ---------------- #
echo "What is the URL of your nextcloud server?":
read NEXTCLOUD_URL
echo "What is your username?":
read USERNAME
echo "What is your password?":
read PASSWORD

# ----------------- [ Phone ] ----------------- #
CONTACTS_CONFIG_NAME="NextcloudContactConf"
CONTACTS_NAME="NextcloudContactDatastore"
echo "What name do you want to give to your local Adressbook?":
read CONTACTS_VISUAL_NAME

CRON_FREQUENCY="hourly"

export DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS=$(ps -u phablet e | grep -Eo 'dbus-daemon.*address=unix:abstract=/tmp/dbus-[A-Za-z0-9]{10}' | tail -c35)

#Create contact list
syncevolution --create-database backend=evolution-contacts database=$CONTACTS_VISUAL_NAME
#Create Peer
syncevolution --configure --template webdav username=$USERNAME password=$PASSWORD syncURL=$NEXTCLOUD_URL/remote.php/dav/addressbooks/users/$USERNAME/contacts/ keyring=no target-config@$CONTACTS_CONFIG_NAME
#Create New Source
syncevolution --configure backend=evolution-contacts database=$CONTACTS_VISUAL_NAME @default $CONTACTS_NAME
#Add remote database
syncevolution --configure database=$NEXTCLOUD_URL/remote.php/dav/addressbooks/users/$USERNAME/contacts/ backend=carddav target-config@$CONTACTS_CONFIG_NAME $CONTACTS_NAME
#Connect remote contact list with local databases
syncevolution --configure --template SyncEvolution_Client Sync=None syncURL=local://@$CONTACTS_CONFIG_NAME username=$USERNAME password=$PASSWORD $CONTACTS_CONFIG_NAME $CONTACTS_NAME
#Add local database to the source
syncevolution --configure sync=two-way backend=evolution-contacts database=$CONTACTS_VISUAL_NAME $CONTACTS_CONFIG_NAME $CONTACTS_NAME
#Start first sync
syncevolution --sync refresh-from-remote $CONTACTS_CONFIG_NAME $CONTACTS_NAME

#Add Sync Cronjob
sudo mount / -o remount,rw
COMMAND_LINE="export DISPLAY=:0.0 && export DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS=$(ps -u phablet e | grep -Eo 'dbus-daemon.*address=unix:abstract=/tmp/dbus-[A-Za-z0-9]{10}' | tail -c35) && /usr/bin/syncevolution $CONTACTS_CONFIG_NAME"
sudo sh -c "echo '$COMMAND_LINE' > /sbin/sogosync"
sudo chmod +x /sbin/sogosync

CRON_LINE="@$CRON_FREQUENCY /sbin/sogosync"
(crontab -u phablet -r;) # only if no other cronjob already exist in the crontab
(crontab -u phablet -l; echo "$CRON_LINE" ) | crontab -u phablet -
sudo mount / -o remount,ro
sudo service cron restart

Thatoo

I found this old tutorial that add a

--template webdav

to the #Add remote database part but it didn't solve my issue

https://itectec.com/ubuntu/ubuntu-how-to-sync-contacts-and-the-calendar-on-ubuntu-touch-with-owncloud/

I have tried also to contribute to this script : https://github.com/UT-ilities/UTouch_CalDAV_and_CardDAV_synchronization
but it isn't working neither.

I have spent hours trying to make something working without success. Too bad... I'll wait for some good news to come then or some help on how to make such script working on UT 16.04 with nextcloud.

gwengui

Hi everyone,

@mardy wrote in last september on Github that CardDav support could be available in OTA21. As we now all use OTA22, I guess that we are getting closer
Good news is that the solution seems almost ready.

@mardy : Could you make any progress since that last message ?

x.Dub

I don't like creating zombie threads. But I would like to ask when to expect carddav support in UT?

gwengui

@x-dub It seems that we have never been so close :

https://github.com/orgs/ubports/projects/35/views/1

gwengui

Hi,

@mardy does not seem to connect to this forum anymore.

Does anyone has any news about the new address book app and CardDav support ? It was almost there in Xenial OTA 24 before its removal.

CardDav synchronisation would be a great feature with Focal !

lduboeuf

@gwengui said in CardDav (contacts) support:

Hi,

@mardy does not seem to connect to this forum anymore.

Does anyone has any news about the new address book app and CardDav support ? It was almost there in Xenial OTA 24 before its removal.

CardDav synchronisation would be a great feature with Focal !

Hi,

AFAIK no one have worked on it. I personally fixed some regressions here and there, but there is still the missing piece of contact synchronisation and i have no idea how to do that.
Hope @mardy or someone can push it back again soon

DPITTI

@lduboeuf said in CardDav (contacts) support:

AFAIK no one have worked on it. I personally fixed some regressions here and there, but there is still the missing piece of contact synchronisation and i have no idea how to do that.
Hope @mardy or someone can push it back again soon

Mardy has a video from Youtube on his homepage of a song sung in Russian. I don't think we'll hear anything more from him any time soon. His FM radio app doesn't work on Focal either.

lduboeuf

@lduboeuf said in CardDav (contacts) support:

@gwengui said in CardDav (contacts) support:

Hi,

@mardy does not seem to connect to this forum anymore.

Does anyone has any news about the new address book app and CardDav support ? It was almost there in Xenial OTA 24 before its removal.

CardDav synchronisation would be a great feature with Focal !

Hi,

AFAIK no one have worked on it. I personally fixed some regressions here and there, but there is still the missing piece of contact synchronisation and i have no idea how to do that.
Hope @mardy or someone can push it back again soon

FYI i got carddav with new backend working on my device. Still early to celebrate though and with manual config only. Lots of testing and reverse engineering to do.

lduboeuf

@lduboeuf said in CardDav (contacts) support:

FYI i got carddav with new backend working on my device. Still early to celebrate though and with manual config only. Lots of testing and reverse engineering to do.

New backend, carddav with NC account: It works! ( still need UI fixes)

lduboeuf

Got "generic Cerddav" working too, but for that one there is not any check and feedback when you create your account.