Feature request: add an option to specify an existing calendar

[dschuermann]

Original author: bevendor...@gmail.com (April 02, 2012 23:41:48)

Long have I searched for an app that syncs my contact's birthdays with my calendar and now I have found this app. I had another app for this purpose before, but it stopped working properly, so I'm glad to have an alternative and Birthday Adapter is great. It's simple, it's beautiful (most birthday apps look awful) and it's functional.

But for me it needs one more feature to be perfect and that is an option to specify an existing calendar to sync the birthdays to. The reason is that I need to sync the birthday calendar with my notebook and my desktop PC. I don't know how it's on "plain" Android, but on my HTC I'm not able to sync the birthday calendar with my Google calendars. An option for syncing the birthday calendar with Google or using an existing calendar would be an awesome feature.

Original issue: http://code.google.com/p/birthday-adapter/issues/detail?id=2

[dschuermann]

From domschuermann@gmail.com on April 05, 2012 22:34:04 I am sorry to say that, but this was not the idea of this app.

When you are already syncing your contacts from your Android into the cloud, then the birthdays are already there. So you just need an application on your Desktop PC that displays the birthdays from your contacts as a calendar. If you are using Thunderbird, I recommend https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/thunderbird/addon/thunderbirthday/

[dschuermann]

From bevendor...@gmail.com on April 05, 2012 23:32:59 Nope, I'm just syncing my calendars with Google, not my contacts and I don't want to change that for several reasons. Is it so extensive to implement this feature? Does the adapter work so much differently than a normal calendar? Syncing with an existing calendar doesn't mean anything else than writing "Birthday of John Doe" to the calendar or deleting this entry, respectively. I don't know how it's handled internally but for me as a user it doesn't look so much different. But I also don't know the internals of the Android calendar system.

[dschuermann]

From domschuermann@gmail.com on April 05, 2012 23:43:19 Actually it is much more difficult. Currently once a day Birthday Adapter goes through all contacts on your phone and adds the events of those contacts to a new calendar, which is read only and before doing this it gets cleared.

Syncing to an already existing calendar would imply several problems:

• I would need a real mapping with ids from the contacts to the calendar events
• Birthday Adapter would need to maintain a list of event ids to differentiate between the events created by Birthday Adapter and other events in the (for example) Google calendar
• Users could edit these events created by Birthday Adapter, but after the next sync their changes will be overwritten by Birthday Adapter
• This is also true for the case when users deletes entries in the calendar.

When doing it one way, it would just be an import function. This is already implemented by EboBirthday and other apps.

If it is an option for you, you can rethink the question of syncing your contacts to a different cloud. See my blogpost: http://dominikschuermann.de/index.php/2012/04/syncing-android-with-owncloud/

[dschuermann]

From bevendor...@gmail.com on April 06, 2012 11:09:01 The fact that changes are overwritten doesn't matter. That calendar doesn't contain anything else than birthdays and I don't edit it manually. I tried EboBirthday a few months ago, but I don't like this app. I also only need the EboBbirthday sync app, but it doesn't work without the full EboBirthay app installed as well.

OwnCloud would be a decent workaround, I think, although an app which writes a Google calendar for me would be easier.

The app I used before was "Happy birthday to calendar", but it stopped working for me some time ago. Suddenly it wasn't able anymore to write new birthdays to the calendar. Only the removal of existing birthday entries was still possible. Maybe I should file a bug report for that app or switch to OwnCloud. I was just hoping you could implement such a feature as well since overall I like your app better than all the others.

[dschuermann]

From domschuermann@gmail.com on April 06, 2012 11:24:13 I am sorry to say that but I will not implement that. It just implies too much problems other users will have with such a option.

I hope you find a decent solution for your specific case.

[dschuermann]

From bevendor...@gmail.com on April 06, 2012 12:15:20 I guess OwnCloud is the way to go. Maybe it can even replace GoogleCalendar completely if it really integrates with the native calendar apps.

[dschuermann]

From domschuermann@gmail.com on April 06, 2012 17:50:01 The apps mentioned in my blogpost integrate in the native apps.

[dschuermann]

From bevendor...@gmail.com on April 06, 2012 17:55:21 Yip, I have it all set up now. I'm only having issues with some recurring events. I know, there is an known issue about that, but I'm not sure if it's the same because in Thunderbird it works all fine but it's not synchronized to my Android phone. But I think I'll handle that.

Thanks so far. I guess OwnCloud is the best solution anyway, making me independent from big brother Google :-)