Re: [Evolution-hackers] Terrible hack to allow read-only access to secure Google Calendars

[Srinivasa Ragavan <sragavan novell com>]

Hi xkahn,

Thanks for your patch. But we have a summer of code student, Ebby
Wiselyn working on a Google calendar backend for Evolution/EDS.

He had great successes recently
(http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-soc-list/2007-August/msg00035.html)

Some screen shots at http://edsgcal.wordpress.com/screenshots-2/

It would be a clean approach and would provide  a read-write access to
Google calendars and will have a better sync mechanisms.

I was hoping to add this to 2.12, but we realized that it is not
feasible and is now targeted for 2.14. 

So I really don't want to take your patch.

-Srini.

On Sat, 2007-08-18 at 11:09 -0400, Benjamin Kahn wrote:
> So I've created a horrible, ugly patch which makes Evolution able to
> display the Google Calendars.  The problem is that you may want to view
> your calendar without using the private URL.  (For example, the hosted
> version of the Google Calendar will only deliver the ics file if you
> have authenticated.)  But Evolution doesn't know how to authenticate to
> Google.
> 
> The attached patch adds the ability to store an authentication token in
> GConf which seem not to expire.
> 
> In other words, you apply this patch to evolution-data-server, run the
> commands that follow, and you'll have READ ONLY access to your Google
> Calendar that only updates every 30 minutes or so.  Yes, it's just as
> fun and easy to use as it sounds.
> 
> First, run:
> 
> curl -D - https://www.google.com/accounts/ClientLogin -d accountType=HOSTED_OR_GOOGLE -d Email='||username||%40||domain||' -d Passwd='||password||' -d service=cl -d source=evolution-testing-0.0.0
> 
> You'll need to replace ||username||, ||domain||, and ||password|| to
> match your email username (domain will likely be google.com) and google
> password.
> 
> This command will return three lines.  The third line will start with
> "auth=".  
> 
> Then call:
> 
> gconftool-2 --type string -s /apps/evolution/calendar/gauth ||authstring||
> 
> You'll need to replace ||authstring|| with the 180+ character string
> returned by the previous command.
> 
> You should only have to do the above once.  Or whenever the auth string
> expires which seems to be very rare, if at all.
> 
> Then quit Evolution and kill the data server with this command:
> 
> evolution --force-shutdown
> 
> Start evolution after applying the attached patch.
> 
> Go to the calendar component and add:
> 
>         webcal://www.google.com/calendar/ical/||username||@||domain||/private/full.ics
> 
> as a web calendar.  You'll need to replace ||username|| with your email
> username and ||domain|| with your email domain, usually gmail.com.
> You'll need to check "Use Secure Connection" and I recommend
> that you cache the calendar locally.
> 
> Anyway, there are some problems:
> 
>       * Seriously, it's an ugly patch
>       * You have to recompile evolution-data-server
>       * Adding an auth token to GConf?!  What are you, nuts?
>       * Evolution may not be able to understand the appointments set by
>         Google's calendar
>       * The calendar only updates every once in a while
>       * You can't edit the calendar in Evolution
> 
> Probably other problems.  :)  I don't recommend this be applied to
> Evolution, but I do think it might be an interesting jumping off point
> for someone else.  For the moment, it solves my problem.  
> 
> I'm not subscribed to e-h, so please include me in any replies.
> 
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