The Exchange Project - Syncing Exchange to iCal and back

As noted [elsewhere][], I decided to go on with the Exchange2iCal project I started almost one year ago.I’m actually getting along nicely, also due to the fact that Jeffrey Harris released the wonderful [VObject][] package some days ago. (Thanks to [Jon][] for the tip!)

So far, the following bits and pieces are working:

• I can get the whole Exchange Calendar as an ics file, including recurrence, alarms and meeting status.
• I can parse and compare two iCalendar files and get the following information:
• New Local/Remote Events
• Changed Local/Remote Events
• Deleted Local/Remote Events

The first part can be considered “stable”, that is, if you’re OK w/ read-only access to you calendar, you could basically use that part. You can download these here: [e2i][].

Warning> These scripts are provided strictly as is. It’s alpha status at best, hacked together to work on my environment and not tested elsewhere than my Mac. There isn’t a README available and I assume that you know how to get the different tidbits needed to make it running, in particular:>#

• Python 2.3>
• PyObjC (If you want to profit from Keychain-based authentication to Exchange)> * Basic knowledge of Python» (If you can’t, then maybe you’re not the exact target audience for these scripts and better wait for the moment where I have something a little more user-friendly *or* where Apple themselves release an iSync to Exchange. I know there are quite a bunch o’ people in the wild that’d like to see this working, but sorry, it’s just not there yet.).» I further assume that you know how to read a program and change certain parameters. > There is some documentation in the code, but remember:> This is not for the faint-hearted!> And now go and run exchange.py :)

The second part (parsing & comparing) is still very buggy and unstable. I get pretty decent results but the parsing & comparing is somewhat unpredictable.

Now, I am heading for the following:

• Increase the stability of the comparison¹
• Implement a first one-way updater
• Wrap the thing up so fetching, comparing and updating will become one monolithic sync process
• Write an iSync plugin

(This last point should be the easiest, as PyObjC can now be used to program NSBundles in Python, as seen [here][]. ;) (Hat tip: [John Gruber][])

Some other tidbits are going along with this as well:

• Increase the stability and usefulness of the XSLT that transforms the Exchange data to iCalendar
• Bring meeting attendee info into the iCS if possible
• Recur to less file-based transactions (i.e., less data-dumps and more advanced uses of stuff like LibXML2’s Python bindings etc.)
• Lure our Sysadmins to install Exchange 2003 ASAP.
• Become better in Python programming :)
• Set-up some project space with a constant URL so people can find this – if they want :)

RationaleYou might ask yourself the question what the rationale of this project is? I’ll admit, I’m only doing this to get /.ed once in my life. :) But before you go and call the dot to slash me, bear in mind that this project is not yet finished – some more time is needed to get something that’s worth a /. :)#

(Actually, getting Exchange on my Mac desktop would be great, too … )