patogit / etesync-dav

This is a CalDAV and CardDAV front-end for EteSync

This is a CalDAV and CardDAV front-end/proxy for EteSync.

This package provides a local CalDAV and CardDAV server that proxies requests to an EteSync server for use with desktop CalDAV and CardDAV clients.

If all you want is to access your data from a computer, you are probably better off using the web app.

This is essentially a compatibility layer between EteSync and DAV clients.

This depends on the radicale_storage_etesync module and the Radicale server for operation.

Installation

pip install etesync-dav

The above should be either run as root, or better yet, inside a python "virtualenv".

Arch Linux

The package etesync-dav is available on AUR.

Docker

Build the Docker image

docker build . -t etesync-dav:latest

Run setup and persist configuration into a docker volume

docker run -it --rm -v etesync:/data etesync-dav:latest setup

Run etesync-dav server in background

docker run --name etesync-dav -d -v etesync:/data -p 37358:37358 --restart=always etesync-dav:latest

Windows systems

You can either follow the Docker instructions above (get Docker here), or alternatively install Python3 for windows from here.

Configuration and running

If you are self-hosting the EteSync server, you will need to set the ETESYNC_URL environment variable to the URL of your server. By default it uses the official EteSync server at https://api.etesync.com. The commands below all use this environment variable to determine which server to connect to.

You need to first add an EteSync user using etesync-dav-manage, for example:

etesync-dav-manage add [e-mail]

On Windows systems, you may have to navigate to the location of the python script etesync-dav-manage.py (e.g. C:\Python\Python36\Scripts) and run

python etesync-dav-manage add [e-mail]

Substitute “[e-mail]” with the username or email you use with your EteSync account or self-hosted server.

and then run the server: etesync-dav

On Windows systems, you may have to navigate to the location of the etesync-dav.py script and run

python etesync-dav

Please note that some antivirus/internet security software may block the CalDAV/CardDAV service from running - make sure that etesync-dav is whitelisted.

After this, set up your CalDAV/CardDAV client to use the username and password you got from etesync-dav-manage, or alternatively run: etesync-dav-manage get [e-mail] to get them again.

Depending on the client you use, the server path should either be:

• http://localhost:37358/
• http://localhost:37358/[e-mail]/

On most clients this should automatically detect your collections (i.e. calendars and address books).

If your client does not automatically detect your collections, you will need to manually add them. You need to find the “collection URL” for each collection you want to add. Currently, the simplest way to do this is to log in to the web interface provided by the internal Radicale server. Just open http://localhost:37358/ in your browser (or substitute “localhost” for the hostname or IP address of the etesync-dav instance). Then you will need to log in using the username and password given by the etesync-dav-manage tool as described above (run etesync-dav-manage get [e-mail] to get them again). The Radicale web interface shows the collections with their names and URLs. You can just copy and paste the URLs into your client. You will most likely also need to manually copy and paste the collection names as well, and select a color manually.

Alternative ways to get collection URLs include programmatically using the pyetesync module (see example.py for example usage), or copy it from the debug page in the EteSync Android app. When using example.py, the EteSync server address that should be used is https://api.etesync.com when interacting with the production server.

Config files

etesync-dav stores data in the directory specified by the CONFIG_DIR environment variable. This includes a database, credentials, and Radicale configuration file. This directory is not relocatable, so if you change CONFIG_DIR you will need to regenerate these files (which means reconfiguring clients). It may be possible to manually edit these files to the new path. Note that the database will just mirror the content of your main EteSync database so in most cases you should not lose anything if you delete it.

CONFIG_DIR defaults to a subdirectory of the appropriate config directory for your platform (~/.config/etesync-dav on Unix/Linux, see appdirs module docs for where it will be on other platforms).

Client support

The following clients have been tested:

• Thunderbird
  • CardDAV: Works.
    • Notes: requires the CardBook add-on, path should include the username as above, and vCard version should be set to v4.0 when prompted
  • CalDAV: Only works when providing full collection path.
    • Requires the Lightning add-on.
• OSX
  • CalDAV: Works.
  • How to setup:
    • Internet Accounts->Add Other Account->CalDAV account
      • Account Type: Advanced
      • Username: [e-mail]
      • Password: generated etesync-dav password
      • Server Address: localhost
      • Server Path: /
      • Port: 37358
      • Uncheck Use SSL

Known issues

• This package is missing startups script for automatic execution on startup.
• Due to an issue with one of the dependencies, some contacts, namely groups, will sometimes fail to work. Revelant PR: eventable/vobject#77