I am building an internal iOS application (so - it won't ever be in the app store), and I need to keep a directory of content synchronized between a server and each of the instances of the iOS application. This would be easy enough if I just wanted to delete and re-download this content each time, but I would rather use something similar to rsync to only download the elements that have changed.
I haven't found any good way to utilize rsync. I considered looking at Objective-Git as a possibility here, but at a quick glance it looked like there is still a lot of the support for remote repositories that isn't supported yet.
As a final note, while this won't be in the app store, I will not be jailbreaking these devices and I would prefer to not rely on any private API's (although if there was an elegant solution that utilized private API's I might consider it).
Thoughts?
ADDITIONAL NOTE: This needs to be an isolated solution. I won't be relying on outside services (like Dropbox, Box.net, etc...). This needs to work solely between the device and the server (which is on a local network with the device).
Use HTTP to list the contents of each folder on the server.
Compare last modification time of each file with those on the device, and identify added/removed files.
Get added and modified files, remove deleted files.
It sounds like you're maybe asking for a library that already does this, but if you don't find one it's obviously moderately easy to write this from the ground up using stat(2) on the server and the same or a higher-level equivalent on the iOS devices. Have the iPhone send a tree of files with their modification date to the server and get back a list of insert/delete/update operations to do with the url (or whatever) for each one so you can do them incrementally on a background thread. Have the information from the server for new/updated files include the mod date that the server has so you can set it to be the same on the iOS device and send that when asking the server for the status of each file (kind of hack using the file system to store that, but it works).
Why not just set up a RESTful interface and do it across HTTP; that way you could query the modification times easily enough to determine whether client or server files need to be updated. You might also want to keep track of what files on the client have been synced, so you can easily know which files to add or delete. This can be done with a simple .sync file or using a plist / sqlite / etc.
If you'll consider FTP, there are some pretty advanced client libraries available.
For example, the iOS Chilkat bundle includes an FTP client library that supports synchronization in both directions. It's not free, but it's pretty cheap -- and you get a ton of other stuff that will likely prove useful someday. Here's an example of iOS pulling down all additions and changes (mode 2):
http://www.example-code.com/ios/ftp_syncLocalTree.asp
One caveat -- judging solely from the example, it doesn't appear to synchronize deletions. If this is a requirement, you could do it yourself without too much effort immediately following a sync.
acrosync (see https://acrosync.com/library.html) seems like a good fit given the initial question, however I haven't used it myself yet.
Related
our devices (microscopes with cameras) produce images and additional information to each image.
Now a middleware supplies wants to connect these devices to lab automation system. They have to acquire the data and we have to provide it. An astonishing thing for me was their interface suggestion - a very cryptical token separated format (ASTM E1394-97). Unfortunatelly, they even can't accomodate images in their protocol, and are aiming to get file-paths.
I thought it is not the up-to date approach. While lookink for alternatives, I saw CoachDB.
So, my idea was, our devices would import data including images in CoachDB and they could get the data. It seems even, that using mustache, we could produce the format they want (ascii-text) and placing URLs as image references instead of path's.
My question is, did someone applied CoachDB for such a use case already? It seems to be a little-bit misuse of CoachDB, as the main intention is interface not data storage. Another point disturbing me is, that the inventor of CoachDB went to other project Coachbase. Could it mean lack of support for CoachDB in the future?
Thank you very much for any insights and suggestions!
It's ok use-case and actually we're using CouchDB in such way - as proxing middleware between medical laboratory analyzers and LIS. Some of them publish images or pdf data on shared folders and we'd just loading them into related document as attachments.
More over you'd like to know, CouchDB is able to serve external processes (aka os_daemons) and take care about their lifespan: restarting if someone had terminated and starting right after you update config options through HTTP interface. This helps to setup ASTM client and server processes since this protocol is different from HTTP (which is native for CouchDB) which communicates with devices and creates documents as regular CouchDB clients. In same way you may setup daemons to monitor shared folders for specific files. And all this is just CouchDB with few "low bounded" plugins.
I'm testing out Microsoft Sync Framework to try and see if it'll be suitable for a task that I'm working on. One of the things I'd like to be able to do is to have the option to not just send changed files, but instead to send all of the files (for example, if I'm syncing to a client machine for the first time, and so want to send all files).
I can't seem to find an example of this in the documentation, so any advice would be welcome.
if you're synching for the first time, then there is nothing special to configure as it will sync everything.
if you've already synched and want to re-send all files regardless of whether they've changed or not, just delete the metadata file and that should remove all knowledge of what has been synched.
I'm in the process of building a simple update server for an application. The parts of the application being updated are configuration files; the most up-to-date copies of these files exist on the update server and these files can be edited by the individual managing the application (the "application manager") at any time. However, I don't want the application to be able to download one of these files while the file is being edited by the application manager; this would obviously cause consistency issues. How can I prevent these files from being accessed in an inconsistent state? Alternatively, would a solution be to provide a checksum along with the file that the application could use to determine if the file was received in a consistent state?
EDIT: I've seen this post concerning access restrictions using .htcaccess and think it could be of use. However, I want the application manager to do as little thinking as possible; having them forget to re-allow connections might be problematic. That being said, they're going to have to do some work at some point; maybe this is the way I should go?
I'm working on an iPhone application that should work in offline and online modes.
In it's online mode it's supposed to feed all the information the user enters to a webservice backed by GWT/GAE.
In it's offline mode it's supposed to store the information locally, and when connection is available sync it up to the web service.
Currently my plan is as follows:
Provide a connection between an app and a webservice using Protobuffers for efficient over-the-wire communication
Work with local DB using Core Data
Poll the network status, and when available sync the database and keep some sort of local-db-to-remote-db key synchronization.
The question is - am I in the right direction? Are the standard patterns for implementing this? Maybe someone can point me to an open-source application that works in a similar fashion?
I am really new to iPhone coding, and would be very glad to hear any suggestions.
Thanks
I think you've blurring the questions together.
If you've got a question about making a GWT web interface, that's one question.
Questions about how to sync an iPhone to a web service are a different question. For that, you don't want to use GWT's RPCs for syncing, as you'd have to fake out the 'browser-side' of the serialization system in your iPhone code, which GWT normally provides for you.
about system design direction:
First if there is no REAL need do not create 2 different apps one GWT and other iPhone
create one but well written GWT app. It will work off line no problem and will manage your data using HTML feature -- offline application cache
If it a must to create 2 separate apps
than at least save yourself effort and do not write server twice as if you go with standard GWT aproach you will almost sertanly fail to talk to server from stand alone app (it is zipped JSON over HTTP with some tricky headers...) or will write things twise so look in to the RestLet library it well supported by the GAE.
About the way to keep sync with offline / online switching:
There are several aproaches to consider and all of them are not perfect. So when you conseder yours think of what youser expects... Do not be Microsoft Word do not try to outsmart the user.
If there at least one scenario in the use cases that demand user intervention to merge changes (And there will be - take it to the bank) - than you will have implement UI for this - than there is a good reason to use it often - user will get used to it. it better than it will see it in a while since he started to use the app because a need fro it is rare because you implemented a super duper merging logic that asks user only in very special cases... Don't do it.
balance the effort. Because the mess that a bug in such code will introduce to user is much more painful than the benefit all together.
so the HOW:
The one way is the Do-UnDo way.
While off line - keep the log of actions user did on data in timed order user did them
as soon as you connected - send to server and execute them. Same from server to client.
Will work fine in most cases as long as you are not writing a Photoshop kind of software with huge amounts of data per operation. Also referred as Action Pattern by the GangOfFour.
Another way is a source control way. - Versions and may be even locks. very application dependent. DBMS internally some times use it for transactions implementations.
And there is always an option to be Read Only when Ofline :-)
Wonder if you have considered using a Sync Framework to manage the synchronization. If that interests you can take a look at the open source project, OpenMobster's Sync service. You can do the following sync operations
two-way
one-way client
one-way device
bootup
Besides that, all modifications are automatically tracked and synced with the Cloud. You can have your app offline when network connection is down. It will track any changes and automatically in the background synchronize it with the cloud when the connection returns. It also provides synchronization like iCloud across multiple devices
Also, modifications in the Cloud are synched using Push notifications, so the data is always current even if it is stored locally.
Here is a link to the open source project: http://openmobster.googlecode.com
Here is a link to iPhone App Sync: http://code.google.com/p/openmobster/wiki/iPhoneSyncApp
I'm looking into building an application which works just as well offline as it does online. Since the application cannot communicate with the server while in offline, there is some level of synchronization which needs to take place.
What are some good tools to read about and start thinking about when planning offline operations with synchronization for your iPhone?
What tools would I have to create on my own, versus tools that apple already provides to help with this particular issue?
I've been working on an app that handles this exact behavior for the last 2 months or so. It has a small subset of functions which are online only and a large set of functionality that is offline/online.
I'm using sqlite for local storage as suggested here with a modified version of the sqlitepersistentobjects library. The base version of sqlitepersistentobjects is not thread safe so watch out if you are using it. (check out objectiverecord in: objectivesync for a thread safe alternative but be prepared to dig into the code). If you are willing to develop for the 3.0 sdk then core data is another possibility for a sqlite library.
The overall architecture is simple enough I have modeled local storage using sqlite and remote interaction using objective resource against a rails app and REST api. It can use either xml or json for data serialization.
When an object is modified locally the change is first saved to the sqlite database record for that object and then added to a queue which is serialized and stored in the local sqlite db as well. (The queue can then be processed at any time)
If there is a connection available any queued local changes are deserialized and added to an NSOperationQueue which then processes them in the background.
In order to make this all work I've subclassed NSOperation so that it can support several types of remote queue operations - create, update, delete essentially using objective resource to make the remote requests.
The nice thing about using NSOperationQueue and NSOperation is that they handle the background threading for you so I'd highly recommend having a look at the apple docs for those classes and also at the apple threading guide.
When the application loads there is a bit of remote checking done and processed in the background to pull down the latest data - although to be honest I am still changing the way this behaves a bit.
That's a quick overview of what I've had to deal with so far...hope it helps a little.
there are plenty of application on the app store which rely on both online as well as offline data
what you should really be doing is on start of your app, run a background thread (which runs silently so your user never sees any delay). this thread downloads the latest data from your server and pushes it into your local database (sqlite is the best choice)
make sure you implement some kind of data versioning so that your app only downloads data which is actually changed since last download - else you would unnecessarily be downloading the entire dataset which can be quite huge (depending upon your app requirements)
also make sure to test for internet connectivity when doing this. if no internet is available, alert the user for sure
this way you get the best of both worlds. users when away from internet can still use your app with their local sqlite data
in iphone os 3.0 apple has introduced push services - where you can simply "PUSH" your data instead of doing a "PULL" however this is not available in the current iPhone OS (2.x.x)
Push is probably not a viable option here, since the amount of data you can push is miniscule, and basically comes back to "tell my app to make a server call". We use an online/offline model in Satchel. Whenever we have to communicate with the server, we bundle that communication (a URL and possibly some POST data) and store it to a database. If we're online, we pull it right back out, send it, and when we get a valid response back, we remove the record from the database. If we're offline, those rows build up, and the next time we ARE online, they get sent out. This is not a workable model in all situations, but can be adapted to most.
In 3.0, you've got access to CoreData, which is a great data management tool. Other than that, the NSURLXXX family is your friend.
I would store all the information I gather while offline in a SQLite database. Then, on user 's request, you can SYNC all the stored information with a server using HTTP or a custom TCP/IP protocol you can come up with.
I have been using this approach on Palm OS applications for almost 10 years now, and they do work very effectively.
As far as I know, the only "tool" you will have to accomplish this is plain old OBJECTIVE-C with Cocoa Touch. Although you could use some TCP/IP C++ libraries that will make your life easier if you decide to implement your own protocol.
Wonder if you have considered using a Sync Framework to manage the synchronization. If that interests you can take a look at the open source project, OpenMobster's Sync service. You can do the following sync operations
two-way
one-way client
one-way device
bootup
Besides that, all modifications are automatically tracked and synced with the Cloud. You can have your app offline when network connection is down. It will track any changes and automatically in the background synchronize it with the cloud when the connection returns. It also provides synchronization like iCloud across multiple devices
Also, modifications in the Cloud are synched using Push notifications, so the data is always current even if it is stored locally.
Here is a link to the open source project: http://openmobster.googlecode.com
Here is a link to iPhone App Sync: http://code.google.com/p/openmobster/wiki/iPhoneSyncApp