Offline Apps and Data Synchronization

[forbesmyester]

Hi LNUG,

I would be very interested in doing a talk.

I have been working on a project for many months, which is an attempt to make it easier to develop apps (web or phonegap) that can work offline but also Synchronize data back up to the server when an Internet connection becomes available. This is a pretty difficult problem to solve, particularly in a way which is not tied to any particular application logic.

The guts of the project is basically an asynchronous versioning LocalStorage written in vanilla JavaScript so it is super portable and reusable ( see https://github.com/forbesmyester/SyncIt ).

I have also started other projects that are loosely coupled to SyncIt for the server component and a network monitoring / communication of changes. See https://github.com/forbesmyester/SyncItControl and https://github.com/forbesmyester/syncit-server.

There is of course always more to do, but it is now feature complete and has a base project ( https://github.com/forbesmyester/SyncItBootstrap ) so it is easy to get an App started. There is even a TodoMVC example ( https://github.com/forbesmyester/SyncItBootstrap/tree/todomvc / http://teud.eu )... The blocks at the top are the synchronization status.

It is all Open Source and I am basically now transitioning from development to trying to get the word out about it as I think it could be really useful for lots of people. Doing a talk at LNUG would be an amazing start to my promotion efforts.

I would talk about:

• The reasons it is a non trivial problem, such as network latency and being offline.
• Trying to keep it as a library and not coupled to jQuery or nearly anything else.
• Why it is essential to have a form of version control for detecting conflicts.
• The choice to trigger the app developers handler for conflicts instead of trying to write a universal one.
• Lastly I would talk about the loosely coupled but complementary projects such as the server and communication control component.
• A demo, or perhaps a few throughout to aid visualisation of what is happening...

You can contact me as @forbesmyester on Twitter or through the email on my GitHub account.

Thanks

Matt Forrester

[forbesmyester]

Forgot to mention month... am open to talking any month.

[orliesaurus]

Hi @forbesmyester! Thanks for submitting: really well explained, I'm sending you an email in a couple of hours when I get home!

[iancrowther]

@forbesmyester What date would you prefer? We have an LNUG on the 23rd, failing that we have slots available for August 27th

[orliesaurus]

@iancrowther I've already spoken with @forbesmyester he's gonna do it in august! :)

[iancrowther]

ah great