Addressbook sync service available for testing

[Mystakill]

Originally Posted by Jeremy Howard

I'm thinking every 6 hours automatically, and max every one hour manually.

Thanks. That sounds like a fairly reasonable sync period.

I just ran a sync and notice that it had imported a number of contacts which I *don't* want to sync, so that they don't clutter up my phone. I've added a bunch of vendors to my contacts solely so that the images in their emails will automatically load, rather than me having to click the load images link in a message. I've put them into a separate group from the rest of my addresses.

Would it be possible to query a user's FM address groups and then offer a checklist of groups to sync/not sync?

[Ennis]

Jeremy. I thought you left Fastmail. What have I missed? You and I used to communicate a lot back in 02.

[Jeremy Howard]

Originally Posted by Ennis

Jeremy. I thought you left Fastmail. What have I missed? You and I used to communicate a lot back in 02.

I'm like Kirill - an enthusiastic alumnus!

[Jeremy Howard]

Originally Posted by Mystakill

Would it be possible to query a user's FM address groups and then offer a checklist of groups to sync/not sync?

It's certainly doable, although I doubt it'll happen in the short term (I'd rather keep the UI to an absolute minimum for now).

Maybe a simple solution that doesn't require a UI would be to define some particular group name, like "Ignore", which doesn't get synced in either direction.

[gjdev]

About international characters:

Originally Posted by Jeremy Howard

This is also now fixed (thanks again Rob!) Make sure that in FM you first have selected Default Charset: UTF-8, in Options->Account Preferences.

Jeremy, since you seem to have special characters working: can you let me know how they are encoded in the messages send by fastmail? They seem wrongly encoded to me. For instance the name "Gérjön" is send by fastmail-soap as:

<Value xsi:type="xsd:base64Binary">R8ODwqlyasODwrZu</Value>

Base64 decoded this is (in hex notation):

47.c3.83.c2.a9.72.6a.c3.83.c2.b6.6e

Which looks most to me like UTF-8, but it is not the UTF-8 representation of the string "Gérjön", but of the string: "Gérjön".

It looks to me that fastmail just somehow messes this up. Do you know how to correctly read the value send by fastmail?

[Jeremy Howard]

Originally Posted by gjdev

About international characters:
Jeremy, since you seem to have special characters working: can you let me know how they are encoded in the messages send by fastmail?

Interesting question - however probably a bit out of the scope of this forum. Could I trouble you to post that question to the FastServices development forum at: http://www.fastcheck.org/phpbb2/viewforum.php?f=4 ? I will then look into it and answer your question there if I can. (The short answer - I am using a .Net web service auto-generated from the WSDL, and it is giving me the right result.)

[Jeremy Howard]

Something has changed at FM, and international chars are now broken again. If you use the sync tool, you will find any field with international chars changed to "System.Byte[]", which isn't very helpful! I've asked Rob to take a look, and will report back when it's sorted out.

[rabarberski]

I am a bit late in the game, but this is great!
I've tried it and seems to work without problems (apart from the known []Byte bug you describe above)

One feature request: would it be possible to ignore certain FM contact groups (e.g. specifi.ed as a list of comma separated strings)? I have a 'safe list' group in my FM address book to whitelist certain addresses, and there is no point for me to sync them.

[Jeremy Howard]

Originally Posted by rabarberski

One feature request: would it be possible to ignore certain FM contact groups (e.g. specifi.ed as a list of comma separated strings)? I have a 'safe list' group in my FM address book to whitelist certain addresses, and there is no point for me to sync them.

That is possible - although I probably won't initially have a UI to choose which groups to ignore, but instead require you to use a particular group name (e.g. "Ignore").

I heard back from Rob today - he said he'd look into the Byte[] issue early next week.

[rabarberski]

For quick access to syncing your address book, you can add a sync link to the top right fastmail page using this javascript tweak (see the wiki for details on javascript tweaks):

/* Put sync address book link in the header */

window.addEvent('domready', function() {
  twkSyncStr = "<a target='_blank' href=http://sync.howard.fm/Home/Sync> Sync addresses </a>" ;
  $('admin').innerHTML = twkSyncStr + "<b> | </b>" + $('admin').innerHTML ;
});

For an example of how it looks, see here.

This code directly calls the sync function (provided you let the sync website remember your logon details). To only go to the sync logon page, remove the /Home/Sync from the URL.

[rabarberski]

Originally Posted by Jeremy Howard

That is possible - although I probably won't initially have a UI to choose which groups to ignore, but instead require you to use a particular group name (e.g. "Ignore").

Your solution would be fine with me as well, although I would suggest to use a more descriptive name like SyncIgnore or similar to make the intention of the group unambiguous (and prevent collisions with other users' existing group names).

[CyberDyne]

Sync worked pefectly here first time.

[CyberDyne]

Originally Posted by rabarberski

This code directly calls the sync function (provided you let the sync website remember your logon details). To only go to the sync logon page, remove the /Home/Sync from the URL.

Personally, with the /Home/Sync still in place, I still have to hit 'Sync' - which is not a problem, just FYI.

[Jeremy Howard]

The bug with international chars showing as 'Byte[]' should now be fixed. That should be the last remaining bug - all that remains before declaring it ready for beta testing is adding automatic sync and some error handling (either by sending error summaries via email, or by having a View Log screen in the sync web interface). I may also add the ability to ignore a group - time depending.

[rabarberski]

Originally Posted by Jeremy Howard

The bug with international chars showing as 'Byte[]' should now be fixed. That should be the last remaining bug - all that remains before declaring it ready for beta testing is adding automatic sync and some error handling (either by sending error summaries via email, or by having a View Log screen in the sync web interface). I may also add the ability to ignore a group - time depending.

great, nice to see the quick follow-up !