ubuntu-phone team mailing list archive

[Daniel Holm <d.holmen@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

Inline answer

> What I'd like, is to be able to simply add an ownCloud account to sync
> contacts and calendars, much like the Google account already does.
> I've
> no interest in installing a dedicated ownCloud app.
> 
Exactly the point of having a owncloud online account plugin.


> Note this has been available in GOA for atleast a couple of years now.

GOA? Google Online Account?


> I'd also like to add notes syncing to the notes app using ownCloud.
> I've
> already done this in my gnome-shell extension, by retrieving the
> credentials from GOA.
> 
> I'd like to do the same on the phone, the code is Javascript, so I
> should be able to reuse it mostly unchanged.

A Notes app would be cool, but is something I won't work on. But you are
happy to join our team and develop it under the Ubuntu ownCloud projekt.

It would probably be rather easy to reuse your code, yes.


> It occurs to me now that even contact/calendar syncing should maybe 
> become part of the content hub experience, these days it's all just
> file 
> exchange anyway.

That would actually be rather effective.


> Looks good Daniel, just been having a play with your code. Can get it 
> running fine on my phone - I like what you've done so far with the 
> owncloud-app. Nothing much to add at this point, unfortunately - I 
> haven't been able to get oxide working yet either. I'm assuming we
> need 
> to get this happening in order for the app to remember login details, 
> etc. Any luck there?

Thanks. Nice to hear that it's easy to get to work for others as well.
Indeed that is still an issue. But I haven't given it another go yet.


> This [1] is a diff for what I did to get oxide working on my 2048
> clone. Maybe that'd help?
> 
> [1] http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~vthompson/+junk/2048/revision/7
> 
Thanks, Victor. I will give it another look, but I believe I have done
this.



> On Android you basically point to app to your installation, and it
> does 
> the rest - not entirely sure how that works. I.e.
> - https://yoururl/owncloud
> Once that's done, the user chooses their addressbooks and calendars - 
> ideal solution really, though I'm unsure of the code to get there. On 
> Thunderbird however, the user needs to enter the entire url to the 
> calendar and addressbook - this would solve the problem above with 
> different languages. Again, for simplicities sake, this might be the 
> easier implementation for now.

You are correct. I will take a look at their source code.



> /Love this concept, but I wonder if we might start running into some 
> trouble with an app that's not /baked-in/. I.e., if file sync is 
> dependent on a third party click package, won't we run into the app 
> restrictions inherent to third party apps? I know the ebook program
> Beru 
> has had this issue - it can only browse files in it's own directory. 
> There are work arounds, but they're fiddly. While I get the security 
> viewpoint, I think there needs to be a way for apps to gain exception
> to 
> this - currently this doesn't seem to exist. Can any devs out there 
> point out a way around this? Syncing files only in the 
> "~/.local/com.developer.appdirectory" isn't all that useful. What 
> implementations exist/are planned, to get around this?

Yes, that is currently an issue, but the sync is still a bit further
down the road, si I think that we will be able to somehow get this to
work later on. We can now add a policy to browse the images folder,
which content we can send to the ownCloud server. Well, I think so at
least.



> Of course it is useful. The ownCloud app needs to be both a consumer
> and 
> provider in the content hub. If you want to use a file you have
> stored 
> in ownCloud in some other app, you pull it through the content hub.
> If 
> you want to put a file from another app in ownCloud, you push it
> through 
> the content hub to ownCloud and that uploads it up.
> 
Point taken! So it shall be!


> If you wanted automatic sharing from an app, you'd set it up in that 
> app, selecting ownCloud (and a folder) as the target. And vice-versa
> you 
> could set up a folder to auto-sync to an app. Not all of that is 
> possible yet, but the story is there.
> 
> Inside the ownCloud app you could select only a few folders to be 
> auto-synced, but through content hub you'd have access to the whole
> set, 
> and only when you pushed a file to one of the apps is when it would
> get 
> downloaded.
> 
> Sounds like work, sure, but the experience can end up really slick, 
> still keeping security in mind :).

Indeed, but we will get there.



> Basically, yes. You'd be sending a message that would be sent to the
> phone, it is a little more optimized than just calling it as the
> messages get batched and set at times when the phone is awake. The
> best way to do it is a module for the ownCloud server, though an
> intermediary server could be used.
> 
> What it needs to do is be able to take the token from a phone
> registering and store that for updates. When the app gets installed on
> the phone it can get that token, send it to the ownCloud module, and
> then the ownCloud server can use that to talk to the phone. When the
> message gets to the phone the ownCloud app can have a smaller helper
> that can determine if the message is important and what to do with it,
> perhaps downloading a file or starting an address book sync or what
> ever is needed.
> 
> Using push messages is a powerful way to get rid of the need for many
> background task operations and since we've left it open for smaller
> helpers to run, you can do lots of cool things with them. Just
> remember to add a timestamp on the messages (for files, the timestamp
> of the file would be good) because the messages are not delivered
> right away (on purpose!)
> 
This will have to be looked into later as well. But this would be if a
change happens in a subscribed folder on your server, right? No push
notification to start a download would otherwise be needed. Or is it the
same thing with changes to the adressbook?


Has anyone else made any progress with anything? :)
> 

-- 
Vänlig hälsning / Yours sincerely,
   Daniel Holm
   IT Consultant
   Web Developer
   Student, Political Science
   d.holmen@xxxxxxxxx
   http://www.danielholm.se