Re: Re: [Evolution-hackers] (webbased) remote client on evolution's data

[Peter Colijn <pcolijn gmail com>]

On Sun, 01 Aug 2004 15:21:38 +0200, Grand Apeiron <grand apeiron gmx net> wrote:
> I've started exploring how evolution stores it's data.
> As far as i found out everything is stored in Berkeley v3 DB-Files.

Well, not everything. I believe local contacts are stored that way,
but local calendars are stored as ics (iCalendar) files, which are
basically just text files, and Evolution can handle mail stored in a
variety of ways (at least mbox and Maildir for local storage, plus
POP/IMAP/Exchange for remote retrieval).

> So that looks to me as if it should be generally possible to
> create a client that visualizes that data.

Yes, it should be, and e-d-s with Evo 2.0 will make this substantially
easier that it would have been for Evo 1.4. You can think of e-d-s as
abstracting away all (most) of the storage-dependent issues, so you
don't really have to care how things are stored.

> But since it wouldn't be a good idea to work directly on the
> db-files i need some point to start exploring evolution's interfaces
> so i can use them instead of working on the db-files directly.

I'd say get a recent Evo 1.5 snapshot, install it, and look at the
e-d-s APIs and play around with those.

However, depending on what kind of remote access you want, you may
find that you don't need to do anything. Evo 2.0 has the ability to
publish your calendar as a WebCalendar, and for access to mail, you
could set up Horde or something.

Actually, now that I think about it, an e-d-s driver for
Horde/Mnemo/Turba/Nag would be pretty cool... Drivers for that suite
of applications actually aren't too hard to write.

Have fun,

Peter