Re: [Opensync-users] Plugin for gnokii

[Armin B. <arm...@de...>]

Eduardo Pereira Habkost wrote:

>On Mon, Apr 25, 2005 at 06:53:22PM +0100, Matthew Kay wrote:
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>>Hi all,
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>Hi, Matthew,
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>>I've written some Python code to help me back up my addressbook from my
>>phone, using gnokii. I'd love to help Opensync by augmenting this into
>>an Opensync plugin. However, there are a few preliminary things I wanted
>>to raise.
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>>
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>Do you know which protocol does gnokii implement, to access your phone?
>
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>>Firstly, the best thing is presumably to convert the information from
>>gnokii into your XML format. However, I haven't been able to find the
>>documentation on this format - could you direct me to it?
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>Not necessarily. You tell opensync on which format the data you reported
>is. You can use the existing formats (e.g. "vcard"), or write a plugin
>for your own format. The xml format is mostly used internally, as it
>isn't even reported as plain xml, but a libxml2 xmlDoc object on memory.
>
>If you plan to write your plugin in python (and test our brand new
>[untested] python plugin support code  :), the better option would be just
>report the data as vcard, because it wouldn't be possible to report
>the xml format, as it is expected to be a C struct.
>  
>
Actually thats not completely true. While the xml format does use the 
libxml c struct and cannot be accessed easily by a python plugin, it 
would _very_ easy to write a new format "xml plain" which is the same 
xml but saved into a string. The converter to do this would be a simple 
xmlParse to go from plain to xml and a xmlDumpMemory to go from xml to 
plain. The plain xml could then easily be created by the python plugin 
(its just a string after all)

>I don't know if the xml format is documented, somewhere. I am used to
>look at the sources to check which fields should be set. Armin may give
>you more information.
>
>So, you have two choices:
>
>- Convert the data to vcard or the xml format before reporting it
>  to opensync. This is the "quick" way, as you just need to write
>  your plugin and not care about making a format-plugin
>
>- Report the data in the format that is reported by your device, or
>  by gnokii, and write a format-plugin to handle this format and and
>  provide functions convert it from/to an already supported format. Then
>  the gnokii-plugin would report the data on this format, and the
>  conversion code on opensync will convert it to the right format when
>  writing it to other devices. This is the preferred way of handling
>  data on other formats, but has the additional work of writing the
>  format plugin, and then write your gnokii plugin. But it shouldn't
>  be so complex, as for the previous approach, you'll need to write
>  a conversion function from gnokii to a know format, anyway
>
>Again, if you plan to write your plugin in python, you'll need to choose
>the first approach, because format-plugins in python aren't supported,
>currently.
>
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>>Also, the information you get from gnokii is much less rich than the
>>information you get from evolution, for instance. For example, there's
>>no birthday field from gnokii. How does that sort of consideration
>>affect a plugin?
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>It should work. But currently, the only problem is: if you change the data
>on your phone, additional fields on the other device (i.e. on evolution),
>will be dropped and your item on evolution will be replaced by the
>"less rich" version from your phone.
>
>To avoid this, we need to implement a feature called "merging", that is
>not supported by opensync, yet.
>
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>>Typically, you get this sort of info from a gnokii plugin:
>>
>>159. Name: Kay Matt
>>Number: +44xxxxxxxxxxx
>>Group id: 5
>>Preferred number: +44xxxxxxxxxxx
>>Cellular number: +44xxxxxxxxxxx
>>Email address: m_...@fa...
>>Business number: +44xxxxxxxxxxxx
>>Home number: +44xxxxxxxxxxxx
>>Notes: blabla
>>
>>The number at the top (here, 159) is the memory location in the phone
>>where the entry is stored. This is needed when you want to overwrite an
>>entry in the phone - you can't just direct it by name. The group ID is
>>something specific to the phone and wouldn't need to be synchronised -
>>it's the friends/family thing.
>>    
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>The number at the top would be the UID your plugin would report. The
>group id could be translated to a category, when converting the data to
>a known format.
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>>Do you think it's feasible to do this? I might need a bit of helpful
>>advice with writing the plugin, but would be happy to give it a go.
>>    
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>I think it is really feasible. But I guess it would be better to write a
>plugin for the protocol your phone uses. But I am not sure what would be
>better, as I don't know how gnokii works, and which protocols it supports.
>
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>>Best wishes,
>>Matt
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