Some of you might remember my [calendaring experiment][] that happened almost one year ago. Well, there’s some news from that front, despite the fact I decided to abandon it. 1. First, the bad news: No, there’s no *real* two-way sync between iCal and Exchange. Yet. 2. Second, the bad news: I got degraded from an Exchange 2003 Server to an Exchange 2000 Server, which is bad, because I can’t issue WebDAV `SEARCH` queries anymore. 3. Third, the bad news: Every time I dump the Calendar with a `PROPFIND` request, I download some 6MB of Calendaring data.[1] And the good news? Well, there’s some, too. * My new employer does work with SSL, which means I don’t have to open the VPN everytime I want to do some testing. * I found some great code to access the OS X Keychain, so there’s a way to keep my passwords out of the code. * I found some iCalendar Python class I can use to access & compare (!) iCalendar events. *Mhm, yummy!* * I’m pretty confident I can finish a working example of that kid *before* Apple releases Tiger. (Which, as it seems, does not really do iCal Exchange sync.) Well, there’s still some more bad news to add. Exchange migration is planned to be finished later in 2005. And I still regularly fall back on *my* posts when I search for more information on this topic on Google. (However, I also found a great example on ASPN, which is first here :) ) Google-Python But now to some of the tidbits of the above list: ##The Exchange Server I got to know that *somehow*, Microsoft crippled their Exchange Server before version 2003 XP1 in a way that it won’t work. More specifically: The examples on MSDN that show how a WebDAV `SEARCH` request is issued won’t work in Python or elsewhere, with the exception of Microsoft’s Windows-only XmlHttp Active X object. Apparently, Service Pack 1 for Exchange 2003 fixes this, so there’s hope. ##The `PROPFIND` `PROPFIND` is a WebDAV extension to HTTP requests. It allows one to dump all or specific properties of *all* elements in a WebDAV store. The good news here is, I can get all the data I want. The bad news is: I can’t filter it server-side, which means a 6MB dump each time I get the Calendar events! I might get that down to 3MB or so, by carefully choosing the properties I *really* need, and do some filtering on the last changed date elsewhere, so there’s hope as well. ##The Keychain One of the greatest things so far is the discovery of the [Keychain Framework][] on SourceForge. Thanks [bdash][] for the link and the code example. With the help of this Framework and [PyObjC][], you can really *easily* access the Keychain, create new entries and–more important–fetch passwords for existing entries! Whew! Some sample code looks like this: import objc, new def getPassword( aService, anAccount = ” ): “”"Will get the password for aService/anAccount from the Keychain”"” Keychain = new.module(’Keychain’) objc.loadBundle(’Keychain’, Keychain.__dict__, bundle_path=’/Library/Frameworks/Keychain.framework’) defaultKeychain = Keychain.Keychain.defaultKeychain() return defaultKeychain.passwordForInternetServer_forAccount_port_path_inSecurityDomain_protocol_auth_( aService, anAccount, 0, ”, ”, 0, 0 ) Pay *close* attention to the trailing “_” at the end of every function name! Yes, I got caught here in the first place! Anyway, this is a *real* helper and I’m thinking of some other frameworks I could use … ## The `iCal.py` Last, but not least, I found [iCal.py][], a little helper class that loads and interprets iCalendar files. It’s far from complete but a very good start, indeed–and it saves me from learning [Ruby][]. ;) ##The Outlook So, where have I gone since the post in January? Not so far by some means–but a lot if you understand what progress I made with respect to some of the points outlined above. I feel much more confident to actually come up with a solution that works! * * * [Keychain]: http://sourceforge.net/projects/keychain/ “Keychain Framework” [Bdash]: http://bdash.net.nz/2004/08/30/example-code-mac-os-x-keychain-access-from-python/ “Example Code to access OS X Keychain from OS X” [calendaring experiment]: http://mycvs.org/archives/2004/01/15/they-got-time-all-wrong-and-a-calendaring-exercise-proves-it/ [PyObjC]: http://pyobjc.sf.net “PyObjC” [iCal.py]: http://www.devoesquared.com/Software/iCal_Module “iCal.py” [Ruby]: http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2003/09/03/rubycocoa.html “Sam Schmidt’s article on Ruby” [1] I might eventually cut them by some good amount, once I know what properties I *really* need.