bookmark synchronization across devices

[azophy]

Salam,

Before I begin, I would like to apologize for my bad english, and I would also like to express my gratitude to the developers, as this app is really useful for all muslim. May Allah bless you for this deed.

I actually would like to suggest a feature that would allow synchonization of the bookmarks between different devices. Beside an android cellphone, a actually also own an android tablet, which would be very helpful if I could quickly check my overall progress of my tilawah or tahfiz if I could synchronize the bookmarks, thus avoiding to check all my devices one-by-one.

I'm not sure if this particular problem is experienced by everyone, but I also think that I couldn't be the only one.

Jazakumullah khairal jaza'

[hmaher]

currently we are working on this feature..

[asyazwan]

What is the status a this? If a full-blown sync system takes too long, I think for time being a simple text-encoded or QR code import/export would suffice. As someone who changes & flashes device every now and then, it is quite a pain to redo the whole process of retagging and bookmarking.

[ahmedre]

api is done, it's just not hooked up into the app yet. if you're flashing the device, you should just use titanium backup (or even a shell in root mode) to save the bookmarks.db file and restore it from /data/data/com.quran.labs.androidquran

[asyazwan]

Thanks for the tip!

[ahmedre]

as an update, the api that we'll integrate is currently under development here: https://github.com/islam-dev/qursync-android

we're waiting on some api and server side fixes to tags to be able to finish up that library and then integrate it into the app insha'Allah.

[afarra]

Private? On Jun 2, 2014 4:13 AM, "ahmedre" notifications@github.com wrote:

as an update, the api that we'll integrate is currently here: https://github.com/ahmedre/qursync-android

we're waiting on some api and server side fixes to tags to be able to finish up that library and then integrate it into the app.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/ahmedre/quran_android/issues/342#issuecomment-44811566 .

[ahmedre]

Fixed the link above.

[ibrahima]

Oh masha Allah, I was just thinking I would try to implement this but I decided to check the issue tracker and saw it was in progress already.

If I may add on a suggestion, one neat thing I've found with the Kindle is that when many people highlight a certain sentence, it shows you that there are 150 highlights of this sentence, for example. Might be cool to do the same with bookmarked ayaat. Assuming the API is open I might try to do that since I've been wanting to contribute to this project for some time :D

[hakimrie]

I think we can use backend service like Firebase for this purpose.

[omar-nahhas]

Salam alaikum,

I have checked the repo for the api and it seems dead. May I ask what was the show stopper? Was it major technical challenges or it was about lack of computer/human/monetary resources ?

I have a couple of ideas on how to implement this at scale, and I was thinking to fork the project and create a pull request , but I wanted to get you views before I start.

Barakah allahu feequm.

[omar-nahhas]

Brother Ahmed,

What do you think about this event driven approach ?

User opens the app, then go to settings, on there there will be a toggle switch that says "synchronize bookmarks with other devices", When the user sets it "on" the app will show two peaces of information:

1 - This device ID (i.e. JSHU28D) 2 - Link to other device ID [ ]

If the user introduces other device ID, a "Link" event [time, mydeviceID,otherdeviceID] will be send to the server. A message will show something like this "Synchronization may take few minutes".

The user will have the option to unlink, and an "unlink event" event [time, mydeviceID,otherdeviceID] will be send to the server.

While this setting is on, the app will log the following two event into the server: 1 - Bookmark created (time, device, ayah, comments ..) 2- Bookmark deleted (time, device, ayah)

The user cannot unlink/link if the device has not internet access. But it still can bookmark and unbookmark, and the events will be stored locally until they are finally pushed (when the device has internet connectivity again)

When the setting is "on". When user starts the app, the application will pull the server for all the events (of linked devices) since last pull. The pull request will contain the following two peaces of information:

• DeviceID
• LastUpdatedTime

The server will send back all the events to the app, and the app will update its bookmarks database.

Any thoughts ? Barakah Allahu feequm.

[ahmedre]

wa3laikum alsalam, so as you mentioned, we did implement it (and, for what it's worth, it was working fine too) - we never ended up launching it though due to wanting to make some changes to the server side first (coupled with the new quran.com redesign and with wanting to make sure whatever we did launch would work for us and for other apps in the future as well). the first steps of this have been implemented on the quran.com side in a pull request here (https://github.com/quran/quran.com-frontend/pull/460) to support user authentication. this is part of a project called "one quran" that aims to reimplement these features, keeping in mind the code that was already written.

if the api ends up being similar to what it was before, we can literally just test and release with the qursync-android library that i put up some time back. i think the initial version did some very simple conflict resolution (if i recall correctly, the server would give back an id of what the current "version" of the data is, and the client would pass that up - if the versions match, the changes requested by the client would be made, otherwise, the client would be told to handle the conflict).

i am not sure how the new one is intended to be implemented - cc @mmahalwy for comment.

jazakAllah khairan, walsalam 3alaikum.

[mmahalwy]

@omar-nahhas thanks for bringing it up and we definitely would love some help!

I think the best course of action is to get one-quran deployed and tested with quran.com. Then we can implement the android side. Currently, it's a Facebook auth that happens on the client side and sends the code to one-quran that will then create/find the user and their data. Only thing that is needed, since Facebook has a client side library + api key, is that be put in the android app and used to auth against for the one-quran to pick up and fetch data.

[omar-nahhas]

@ahmedre @mmahalwy How is the integration suppose to behave when user is offline ? What happen with the users that do not user facebook? Salam. Omar

[ahmedre]

Facebook won't be a requirement - it'll be one of the supported login mechanisms. Offline, in the old version, we talked about a revision based system (i.e. you tell the server, "these updates are based on the fact that i am at revision x" - if the server is at some revision x+1, it'll say sorry, sync first (at which point sync conflicts can be handled by the client (prompting the person using the app if needed))).

not sure about the new version Mohamed is working on, will let him comment insha'Allah.

[benybee]

Assalamualaykum

What is the status of this?

[m0mk]

It's encouraging to see people have been wishing for this feature for 8 years already. Can we please, please push it past the finishing line?

[njmulsqb]

I see bookmarks sync on website but cant see any such option on mobile.

[ahmedre]

this was recently added to the website and the intention was to allow mobile apps to use the APIs in the future - I'll follow up about this and hopefully we can make it happen in sha' Allah.

[yulrizka]

Assalamualaikum wr. wb. It has been almost another year since last update. Do you mind giving us update? What are the difficulties? Is there anything the community can help?

[ahmedre]

wa3laikum alsalam wa ra7matullahi wa barakatuh, i think the APIs weren't finalized yet - @osamasayed any update on this from the quran.com side? jazakumAllah khairan. walsalam 3alaikum