Re: [Evolution-hackers] libebook and E-D-S questions / help

[Sven Pfaller <kalterregen gmx net>]

Hi Patrick.

Patrick Ohly schrieb:
> On Fri, 2008-08-01 at 16:14 +0200, Sven Pfaller wrote:
> > libsoylent uses libebook extensively, so I am working longer than a 
> > month with libebook and libebook-data now. Some questions queued up, and 
> > I would also be thankful for some help as I am stuck with some bugs (?) 
> > at the moment.
>
> I have used some parts of libebook in SyncEvolution and can try to
> answer some questions, but probably not all.
>
> > Okay, here are my points:
> >
> >   * attribute-value-lists:
> >
> > When I call e_vcard_attribute_get_values, I get a list of values. For 
> > example if I call it on the ADDR attribute, I get a list like:
> >
> > "foo-street", "foo-city", "foo-region" ...
> >
> > If two addresses exist, the list looks like this:
> >
> > "foo-street", "foo-city", "foo-region", "bar-street", "bar-city", 
> > "bar-region" ...
> >
> > Is there a way to retrieve the raw vCard strings as a list?
>
> I don't think so. You can get the complete vCard or none, but not parts
> of it.

This raises the question how Evolution processes this value-list. It has 
to know somehow that the first 6 values of ADDR are the home address, 
the next 6 are the work address and so on. The type parameters 
(TYPE=home, TYPE=work) are also given as list. So, if the first 
parameter is TYPE=home, then Evolution takes the first 6 values of ADDR 
as home-address, and if the second is TYPE=work then it takes the next 6 
as work-address? This feels kind of strange to me. Can anyone confirm 
that, or outline how Evolution really does it?

> >   * creating a system-addressbook
> >
> > On a fresh system, where Evolution hasn't been run yet, there exists no 
> > system-addressbook. libsoylent relies on a system-addressbook, so it has 
> > to create it if it doesn't exist yet. I didn't find anything about that 
> > in the documentation or in the Evolution source. Could you please give 
> > me a hint or point me to the right location in the Evolution source?
>
> You can create a new address book with e_book_new_from_uri() and a
> "file://" URI. However, this address book is not visible in Evolution.
> Some special sauce is necessary to make the recipe complete. For
> example, adding entries to the gconf database. I don't know where
> Evolution does that work.

Seems like I missed the file:// URI. Is there some default path that I 
should use for the addressbook (under Ubuntu it seems like 
~/.evolution/addressbook/local ?) or a way to obtain the path for local 
addressbooks (like an environment variable)?

I already managed to make the addressbook visible to the system, it is 
done via e_source_list_sync.

> >   * adding contacts to an addressbook
> >
> > libsoylent creates addressbooks with calls to e_source_new, 
> > e_source_group_add, e_sourc_list_sync.
> > However, if I try to add contacts to an addressbook created this way, 
> > E-D-S will just hang forever.
> > Detailed source-code is attached. Help would be highly appreciated :) . 
> > Should I file a bug for this?
>
> Before you do that you'll need to figure out what happens in EDS. Run it
> in a shell window by starting evolution-data-server manually before
> Evolution does it automatically. Also install the debug information for
> it and if it crashes, use a debugger to find out where and why.
>
> I suspect that you are doing something that crashes it, in which case
> clients using the synchronous API hang forever. This is a known problem
> that was discussed on this list a while ago; there's no good solution.
> The workaround that I tried (running the necessary event loops in a
> second thread) caused crashes, so I removed it again from SyncEvolution.

I'll try first to find out if the symptom is fixed when creating an 
addressbook with the file:// URI. If the problem persists I will take 
your advice and try to trace down the cause of the error.

> >   * deleting an addressbook
> >
> > This one seems related to the "adding contacts" problem. Trying to 
> > delete addressbooks that were created like described above will result 
> > in e_book_remove throwing an "EDS-Status returned 20" error.
>
> No idea. Again, tracking the call in EDS with a debugger will tell you
> more.
>
> > Okay, that's it. If you could help me, that would make me ueber-happy ;) 
> > . Just tell me if you need more information.
>
> Giving the version of your Evolution and (presumably) Linux distribution
> would be a start...

Sorry, I totally missed it.

I'm running Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy, fully updated.
libebook & E-D-S: 2.22.3-0ubuntu1

Thanks for your help Patrick, I really appreciate it :)

See you
- Sven