CardDAV sync

[mcduarte2000]

As an email client it will certainly have a contact database. Please create a functionality which will allow it to sync those contacts with a CardDAV server.

[fbender]

At the least I'd like to see some hooks for a contact database. An internal service (i. e. contact database) can be used as a default, however it would be nive to have a choice on what system to use here.

Same applies for similar "services", of course.

[jkufner]

Full CardDAV support is a must. It is the only usable protocol to sync with Android (using CalDAV-Sync), Akonadi (KDE) and Thunderbird (using SOGO connector).

[smari]

I have written rudimentary CardDAV support, but it isn't hooked into the Contacts manager yet - mostly because it's not fully designed yet and still needs a bunch of work. I'm thinking the correct way to do so is to have "importer" and "exporter" hooks on the Contacts database (amongst others!) that I can then also hook my GPG pubkey list importer into.. which is all to say: this is in the works.

[jkufner]

Isn't better to think about CardDav as primary storage and anything else use as a dumb cache?

[shartte]

Well. CardDAV is a protocol, not a form of storage.

[jkufner]

I mean use CardDav server as primary storage and act like there is no local storage. Syncing is pain in the ass, so simple caching is much easier.

[shartte]

Not everyone will want to rely on an external service to store their contacts.

It would probably be a good idea to use pluggable contact providers (read-only and not read-only) to support such a use-case though. A CardDAV server could be used to connect other devices to the internal contact storage of mailpile as well. But that is probably something for the later.

[smari]

Relying on external services means promoting centralization. It is much more healthy to intend to provide CardDAV server features, maybe, perhaps as a plugin, somewhere down the line. Until then, having importers and exporters is sufficient. People who have CardDAV servers will be able to work with them.

[jkufner]

It is good idea to make backends/connectors pluggable. So if I have CardDAV server, I can use it directly, and if not, there is some local storage instead. Adding support for another protocol is easy this way. Android uses similar approach with its accounts.

Anyway, pushing user/admin to install CardDAV server next to his IMAP server is a good idea since it brings many good features and solves sync problems. Local storage alternative should be only "I'm lazy and I want to torture my users." option :)

[BjarniRunar]

@jkufner: I think you are considering this primarily from the point of view of a sysadmin running services for users. You assume there is an admin to push. We don't, we are writing software for end users to be independent. Requiring the user install multiple pieces of software and configure them all to talk to each other is not remotely reasonable except for highly skilled users. So our points of view differ significantly on this.

Your viewpoints however will be much more on-topic once we start work on the multi-user version of Mailpile. But that comes later.

[jkufner]

Installing Davical as CardDAV server is not any harder than installing IMAP server. You just select it in package manager and click "install" ;)

[mcduarte2000]

I use Baïkal: http://baikal-server.com/, as my CalDAV and CardDAV server (on a Synology). Installing it was as simple as just unzipping the files on the web folder of the NAS. My idea is to also in the future instal Mailpile on my Synology NAS. Whatever you do please allow Mailpile to sync its data with this type of applications.

[djoris]

Kolab Storage Format relies on IMAP for storing PIM information, thus eliminating the need for a DAV server.
https://wiki.kolab.org/Kolab_3.0_Storage_Format

There are quite some clients for syncing with Kolab. The protocol however seems a bit closed in development terms.
Besides contacts & calendar, Kolab supports notes (see feature request #247) and tasks.

[oparoz]

Baikal is a (nice) frontend for SabreDAV. That's the component which should be used. It could also serve files (webDAV) without having to move them from received emails to a cloud.

[ghost]

BountySource: https://www.bountysource.com/issues/1144150-carddav-sync

[BjarniRunar]

Note, issue #705 has a bunch of good comments, and I am currently considering the Radicale proposal as well.

[stevenroose]

Any news on this? Allowing the use of Mailpile with an existing CardDAV server would be awesome!