[Owncloud] Ldap address book

[Thomas Tanghus]

On Tuesday 29 January 2013 12:12 Arthur Schiwon wrote:
> On 01/28/2013 04:06 PM, Fiorenza Meini wrote:> Hi there,
> 
> > I'd like to know if there is a way to see contacts on a Ldap server and
> > to sync them through CardAV.
> 
> in the moment there is no link between LDAP and the Contacts App. I
> cannot figure out an very easy way to do so.The best way would probably
> be to write an App that connects Contacts and LDAP backend. Should not
> be a problem to utilize the LDAP backend, not sure about Contacts.

We have made a basic implementation of a contacts manager [1] in which you can 
register address books implementing the IAddressBook interface [2].

For now this is only used to provide addresses to the mail app and the only 
provider is the contacts app [3].

My plan is to have the contacts app backend get the data from the contacts 
manager to be able to have additional backends besides the ownCloud db backend 
- for example an LDAP backend - but this won't be until ownCloud 6. 
Specifically for LDAP the contacts wouldn't be "1st class members" of the 
contacts app, but be available via the search function because LDAP 
directories typically have many thousand entries.

For the same reason I don't think it's feasible to make an LDAP -> CardDAV 
bridge. Many CardDAV clients won't be able to handle this, so it's better to 
use a specialized LDAP client for this.

[1] https://github.com/owncloud/core/blob/master/lib/public/contacts.php
[2] https://github.com/owncloud/core/blob/master/lib/public/iaddressbook.php
[3] 
https://github.com/owncloud/apps/blob/master/contacts/lib/addressbookprovider.php

-- 
Med venlig hilsen / Best Regards

Thomas Tanghus