[Owncloud] Future changes to sharing

[Michael Gapczynski]

It has been almost a year since I started working on sharing for ownCloud 
through Google Summer of Code. I'm happy with my results, but it seems that 
sharing isn't being utilized to its full potential. I would appreciate some 
feedback on two major changes that I am planning on implementing.


1) More people to share with

Currently files can be shared with any user or group, but I would like to 
expand this to email addresses and integrate it with the contacts app. This 
need became clear to me because I don't have any users on my personal ownCloud 
instance. Sharing via email could work by automatically sending a private link 
to the file or attaching small files directly to the email. 

Email addresses could be pulled from the contacts app if installed and a 
contact could be linked to a local or remote ownCloud user. This is where the 
following Google Summer of Code idea comes in: Inter ownCloud Instance Sharing 
I'm hoping someone applies for this task and I can work with the student.


2) Sharing backends for apps

The sharing class was designed to be file independent so other types of 
content could be shared. While this seemed like a good idea at the time, I've 
realized that most content users share traces back to a file. Sharing 
music, videos, albums, and photos from their respective apps requires some 
file in ownCloud's file system. 

Sharing without noting the file doesn't prevent the content from being shared, 
but can lead to confusion for the user. Duplicates may appear when the content 
is shared from the app as well as the corresponding file. Or a user doesn't 
understand when a song appears in the music app, but there is no way to 
download it. 

Each app would include its own sharing backend, which includes their own 
functions for translating the sources in the sharing database into their own 
respective content. For example, the gallery app could store a photo_id in the 
sharing database and then pull the image path from its own database. 
Management of the sharing database is provided in the OC_Share class, reducing 
the workload for the developer to share content in their own app. The purpose 
for backends is to allow apps to share content in their own way using the 
sharing system. The goal of this change is to give the user a consistent 
approach to sharing content within ownCloud.

I'm looking forward to any feedback.


Michael
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