Topic: open source iPhone sync api [proposal] (Read 42712 times)

Cheburashka · « **Reply #50 on:** December 05, 2008, 01:16:14 pm »

Quote from: Doof on December 05, 2008, 07:25:29 am

So when can we expect your plugin?

I don't claim the ability to do this. I'm merely pointing out issues that otherwise seemed to be overlooked.

Honestly, though, this seems to me like a problem jriver should be solving on its own rather than turning to the community for a solution. Other vendors have been able to solve it. And if they have to periodically re-solve it... So what -- that's why jriver isn't free.

gvanbrunt · « **Reply #51 on:** December 05, 2008, 01:25:35 pm »

Just want to clarify a couple of things. First interfacing directly with the dll will not be much faster than going through iTunes API if at all. Second, JRiver never used an Apple API, which is why their iPod support "broke" when Apple changed the details of how things worked. The whole point of an API is that it is robust and works across versions and upgrades (usually). The dll method faces the same problems as jRivers current implementation, it can (and will) break when Apple changes things. Look up Ordinals and dlls for the details. That is only part of the problem. The implementation also isn’t' a public API so Apple will change that whenever they feel like, which will be about as soon as they hear about an iTunes competitor using it directly.

Also, it isn't as simple as throwing a few programmers at the problem and being able to fix it. They have to reverse engineer how Apple does things. Apple is a huge corporation with billions of dollars and is in bed with communications companies that have billions more. They want to be able to lock users into their services and have invested a great deal of effort in blocking reverse engineering. It is not a simple task.

Cheburashka · « **Reply #52 on:** December 08, 2008, 12:33:53 pm »

Quote from: gvanbrunt on December 05, 2008, 01:25:35 pm

Also, it isn't as simple as throwing a few programmers at the problem and being able to fix it. They have to reverse engineer how Apple does things. Apple is a huge corporation with billions of dollars and is in bed with communications companies that have billions more. They want to be able to lock users into their services and have invested a great deal of effort in blocking reverse engineering. It is not a simple task.

I never said it was simple, but it doesn't seem to be much more complicated than throwing some number of programmers at the problem.

I could be wrong that interfacing with the .dll will offer substantial performance improvements over interfacing with iTunes via the public API. If the issue is that this will have to be periodically modified when the .dll changes... again, JRiver isn't free.

Doof · « **Reply #53 on:** December 17, 2008, 07:25:17 am »

Any news?

glynor · « **Reply #54 on:** December 17, 2008, 10:07:35 am »

Quote from: Cheburashka on December 08, 2008, 12:33:53 pm

I never said it was simple, but it doesn't seem to be much more complicated than throwing some number of programmers at the problem.

I could be wrong that interfacing with the .dll will offer substantial performance improvements over interfacing with iTunes via the public API. If the issue is that this will have to be periodically modified when the .dll changes... again, JRiver isn't free.

Understood. The confusion has come because you're preaching to the choir. I think all of us would certainly prefer that JRiver do this all fancy and whatnot (though I'd personally actually prefer that all syncing happen through iTunes rather than through MC directly, because I want the other functions that iTunes does when it syncs -- App Store syncing and installs, Contacts and Bookmarks syncing, etc, etc). Either way, we've moved beyond that because the CEO of JRiver unequivocally said "no". So it is now this way or the highway.

You're fighting a fight that was already fought and lost.

gvanbrunt · « **Reply #55 on:** December 17, 2008, 07:48:53 pm »

OK, some quick updates for everyone. I've been busy at work for the last while and had to drop this for a bit. The good news is I have a lot of holidays owing that I'll be taking them starting next week. I'll then have some real time to spend on this. I've gotten as far as figuring out how to use the interface Matt provided. I'm going to make up a test plug in to figure out the fine details. I'll try to get that done in the next couple of days.

Glynor, this plug in would do exactly what you want. You set iTunes to manually manage music etc. Then MC is used to sync music etc, and iTunes can be used to sync the rest.

zxsix · « **Reply #56 on:** December 17, 2008, 10:08:14 pm »

I'll have some time off as well. Feel free to call on me for any testing you may need.
brian at glockster dot net is where I can be contacted, or here in this thread.

Doof · « **Reply #57 on:** January 03, 2009, 11:23:45 am »

Can somebody inquire as to the status of this so I don't sound like a nag?

Magic_Randy · « **Reply #58 on:** January 03, 2009, 01:31:54 pm »

What's the status of this?

JimH · « **Reply #59 on:** January 03, 2009, 02:34:03 pm »

The original poster hasn't visited the forum in a couple of months.

Doof · « **Reply #60 on:** January 03, 2009, 03:53:59 pm »

Yeah, but it wasn't the original poster who said he was going to build this thing.

gvanbrunt · « **Reply #61 on:** January 04, 2009, 08:19:18 pm »

Matt:

How is CreatePortableDrive called from MediaCenter? I've been playing around with this but can't get it to work. It looks like a COM component but I'm guessing it's not being used this way? Is it "calling" the exported function directly?

cracksloth · « **Reply #62 on:** January 06, 2009, 03:25:23 am »

@JimH

I've been lurking (just not logged in). As Doof pointed out, I have no real "skills" of my own but I felt the need to contribute my (humble) assessment of the situation. I just wanted to express that Apple's latest hardware offerings represent a significant marketshare and to ignore it out of frustration is not wise in the longterm. The community would benefit from having a few pioneering souls to brave the fight and inspire others to help. A few leaders and community involvement is the best answer to this long term problem. Unfortunately, it usually takes a working product to inspire others which is why I'm so impressed with gvanbrunt. It takes a lot to get something like this started and build momentum. So a big thanks to you, gvanbrunt!!

gvanbrunt · « **Reply #63 on:** January 06, 2009, 09:28:43 am »

This is a little off topic but I think we should be seeing a different attitude from Apple in the near future. They had a monoply on "iphone like products", but now everyone and their dog has a touchscreen device. Hell, there are even Android phones that have a keyboard as well. They are going to start seening their share shrink and are going to have to play ball to keep people in their court. Their is also the Android OS and MS has touch features slated for their next release of Moble.

As for this project, I think I figured out the problem I've been having and hope to have the "interface" provided by Matt working this evening. I can then figure out how it works.

gvanbrunt · « **Reply #64 on:** January 06, 2009, 07:52:08 pm »

In the imortal words of Borat: "Great Success!"

I've finally managed to whip up a plug in using the undocumented interface Matt provided that doesn't crash MC and dumps out stuff to the "debug stream". That said, I'm now working on figuring out how the interface works exactly.

Just wanted to keep everyone in the loop so I don't get roasted at the stake...

Just kidding, sometime's I need a kick in the butt to get going. I also in true geek fashion wanted to tell someone about "the cool thing I dun". Only a nerd like myself would get excited about coding.

gvanbrunt · « **Reply #65 on:** January 13, 2009, 08:33:02 pm »

Well, it took a lot longer than I thought, but I've finished my analysis of the IPortable interface. I've uploaded it here:

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=ZOIGWHAV

It's only two pages, but there are some things that need to be sorted out by JRiver. I would love to use the interface as it will make writing the plugin much easier.

Matt:
Could you take a look at the doc and let me know if JRiver will do the work needed to make using the interface possible? If I get a yes I can continue to work on the plug-in in the mean time using an IPod as they are no different as far as the iTunes sdk is concerned. If someone could give the write-up a quick sanity check, that would be nice too...

Thanks

JONCAT · « **Reply #66 on:** January 19, 2009, 01:44:58 pm »

Count me in for testing if/when needed (Nano & iPhone).

DC

Messiahs · « **Reply #67 on:** January 19, 2009, 04:59:01 pm »

@gvanbrunt
can you please upload a pdf ?

gvanbrunt · « **Reply #68 on:** January 19, 2009, 06:06:05 pm »

PDF of file.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=K7N43DRT

Messiahs · « **Reply #69 on:** January 20, 2009, 01:52:09 am »

Thanks

gvanbrunt · « **Reply #70 on:** January 21, 2009, 04:55:46 pm »

Bump.

So how about it JRiver? I would like to get going on this, but I'm still waiting for a response to my request about adding support for loading the plugin, etc. I don't want to be a pest, but I know others will be after me if I don't get this going soon...

neFAST · « **Reply #71 on:** January 21, 2009, 05:25:03 pm »

Sorry Dude, they're too busy glashing their G1s

JimH · « **Reply #72 on:** January 21, 2009, 05:40:17 pm »

glashing?

Urban Dictionary definition of glash

I think your girl friend is safe.

Matt · « **Reply #73 on:** January 21, 2009, 06:31:48 pm »

The document looks great.

The device info object is cryptic, but pretty simple. It's an array of strings like (#characters:value) The values are in pairs, so each two makes an entry. (a string to string map works well for storage) If you need C++ parsing code, let me know and we'll see what we can do. Most of the values are just user settings. A few are device ID gathered during device detection.

You're right that the old plugin was COM, but we're moving away from COM because it's not very cross-platform or portable install friendly. Most plugins are plain C++ interfaces now.

As for the detection side, I'm not sure. To start, just replace the existing hh_portable with your own. If it looks like it will work, we'll figure out a nice way to hook it up.

Thanks for your work so far, and good luck

gvanbrunt · « **Reply #74 on:** January 22, 2009, 08:51:21 am »

ah, the first number is the number of characters. Now me feel dumb.

That was what I was wondering about. With the details you provided, I can write the parsing code pretty quick. Thanks for the offer though.

As for hh_portable, I've already done the replacement part; it was how I figured the interface out.

It will work. I've also looked at using the Apple API and it's doable as well. I’ve pretty much got everything figured out. The only thing I needed was a commitment from your end, and since I’ve got that, I can proceed. I have an IPod I can use in the meantime for testing. The only problem I can see right now (for you) is how you are going to pull the device ID during detection.

I’m going to start on this soon, but I may have a couple of questions along the way.

Thanks Again

glynor · « **Reply #75 on:** January 23, 2009, 11:25:23 am »

I'm so excited (and I just can't hide it)...

If you need user beta testing or support documentation writing, please just let me know. I'm happy to help where I can. You can PM me here and I'll get the message fairly quickly.

Doof · « **Reply #76 on:** January 24, 2009, 08:52:35 am »

Yeah, same here. I've got an iTouch and a Shuffle if that helps with testing. Although theoretically, the model iPod really shouldn't matter I wouldn't think.

JONCAT · « **Reply #77 on:** January 24, 2009, 10:18:28 am »

Quote from: JimH on January 21, 2009, 05:40:17 pm

glashing?

Urban Dictionary definition of glash

I think your girl friend is safe.

LOL. I'm really hoping this moves forward. I offer moral support as well as my iPhone for testing. I'm literally dying having to suffer through iTunes after syncing MC to a virtual handheld; works but VERY tedious.

DC

gvanbrunt · « **Reply #78 on:** January 24, 2009, 06:50:38 pm »

Hey, Doof and Glynor have the same number of posts.... Spooky...

5413 when I looked.

Doof · « **Reply #79 on:** January 24, 2009, 11:33:24 pm »

Quote from: gvanbrunt on January 24, 2009, 06:50:38 pm

Hey, Doof and Glynor have the same number of posts.... Spooky...

5413 when I looked.

Guess I better post again so I don't lose my lead.

glynor · « **Reply #80 on:** January 25, 2009, 01:33:37 am »

That is spooky (and we're tied again now).

gvanbrunt · « **Reply #81 on:** January 25, 2009, 08:27:36 pm »

Uh oh, hope I didn't start some kind of sudo flame war thread with one trying to outdo the other. Could be a real long thread...

JimH · « **Reply #82 on:** January 26, 2009, 07:06:02 am »

I could fix that. The admin has the power to reset a user's post count. That's how I got so many posts.

Doof · « **Reply #83 on:** January 26, 2009, 08:30:11 am »

Quote from: gvanbrunt on January 25, 2009, 08:27:36 pm

Uh oh, hope I didn't start some kind of sudo flame war thread with one trying to outdo the other. Could be a real long thread...

No flame war, but you may have kicked off a post count cold war. Who will post first? MAPCI (Mutually Assured Post Count Increase)? Doesn't have the same ring to it, does it...

Uh, oh... looks like I fired the first shot.

Doof · « **Reply #84 on:** January 27, 2009, 02:50:38 pm »

How come my post count is going down?!?

gvanbrunt · « **Reply #85 on:** January 28, 2009, 09:29:41 pm »

Matt:

I need a bit of help with the error handling in the plug in. It seems that no matter what HRESULT I return from a function, MC never calls GetLastError. When does this actually occur? Also, if I need to display an error message or such, is it possible from the plug in? What I figured was, one would be created when returning certain HRESULTs when MC called GetLastError. Any pointers on how I'm supposed to handle this?

ThoBar · « **Reply #86 on:** February 01, 2009, 08:45:08 pm »

Just wanted to give a quick hello and thanks to gvanbrunt for all the work on this. As a current (although admittedly reluctant) iPhone user, I am waiting with bated breath for this plugin. I hope your work comes to fruitition.

Kudos for the time and effort put in. Many could, you did.

glynor · « **Reply #87 on:** February 02, 2009, 10:44:07 am »

I'm even more interested in this now. I just installed Windows 7 on my Macbook Pro, and am using it for my one-and-only copy of iTunes. In setting that up, I switched over to AVG Internet Security (I use an old Corporate Symantec AV on my WinXP installs, from before they made it all bloated and terrible). Unfortunately, I discovered today that AVG's resident protection blocks iTLU, which I'm currently using to sync my iTunes library to the "handheld" folder on my hard drive (which MC syncs to).

So now, to sync my phone, it is a huge multi-step process made one step harder by the need to manually go in and disable AVG (a process which takes like 6 clicks and a UAC prompt). Either that, or I need to find a different A/V application (equally annoying).

So here's hoping that this'll end up working, and secondarily that it'll work with anti-virus protection turned on!

glynor · « **Reply #88 on:** February 02, 2009, 11:43:26 am »

FWIW, I think I've decided to abandon AVG and use ClamWin, for now. I have mixed feelings, because I did like the AVG Anti-Rootkit and Anti-Spyware protection, but I don't like their Real Time scanner (without which, a lot of the other stuff is useless).

gvanbrunt · « **Reply #89 on:** February 02, 2009, 04:24:22 pm »

Thanks for all the words of encouragment so far. I too want to get this working as I don't even really sync my iphone at this point as it is too much trouble. I just use my ipod.

Also, I'm still waiting for JRiver to answer my question on how the error handling works. I don't want to have to go back in and drop in a tone of code later.

If someone there could take a quick look at the source and let me know, I would really appreciate it.

Doof · « **Reply #90 on:** February 20, 2009, 01:27:50 pm »

Any reply from JRiver yet?

JONCAT · « **Reply #91 on:** February 20, 2009, 01:32:50 pm »

Let us know if we can help in any way...

DC

gvanbrunt · « **Reply #92 on:** February 22, 2009, 09:45:29 pm »

So far no reply.

leezer3 · « **Reply #93 on:** February 25, 2009, 12:35:36 pm »

Try PM'ing Matt if you haven't already

Possibly the best way to make sure it doesn't get missed.

-Leezer-

Doof · « **Reply #94 on:** March 02, 2009, 04:13:29 pm »

Anything?

Matt · « **Reply #95 on:** March 02, 2009, 04:25:14 pm »

There's not much to say about error handling. GetLastError(...) is probably only called after an Initialize(...) failure or delete command failure.

You can also show your own custom error messages in Initialize(...) if there's some device problem.

gvanbrunt · « **Reply #96 on:** March 04, 2009, 03:59:54 pm »

I've tried returning a whole slew of different HRESULTS from Initialize including E_Abort. None seems to trigger GetLastError though, so maybe it isn't called at all? I do need to be able to abort loading the plugin if there is some error loading and display a message to the user though. Without access to the source that isn't somehting I can answer though...

I'm not sure what you are talking about the custom error message though. Is this something propriatary or are you simply suggesting to create a dialog box via my own code?

Matt · « **Reply #97 on:** March 04, 2009, 04:20:05 pm »

Quote from: gvanbrunt on March 04, 2009, 03:59:54 pm

I've tried returning a whole slew of different HRESULTS from Initialize including E_Abort. None seems to trigger GetLastError though, so maybe it isn't called at all? I do need to be able to abort loading the plugin if there is some error loading and display a message to the user though. Without access to the source that isn't somehting I can answer though...

Show the error yourself with a message box or custom dialog. Then return anything other than S_OK.

Quote

I'm not sure what you are talking about the custom error message though. Is this something propriatary or are you simply suggesting to create a dialog box via my own code?

Even the Windows API MessageBox(...) function would be fine.

Doof · « **Reply #98 on:** March 13, 2009, 07:51:00 am »

<nag>
Any progress?
</nag>

ThoBar · « **Reply #99 on:** March 26, 2009, 08:11:26 pm »

Quote from: Doof on March 13, 2009, 07:51:00 am

<nag>
Any progress?
</nag>

Ditto

INTERACT FORUM

Author Topic: open source iPhone sync api [proposal] (Read 42712 times)

JONCAT

JONCAT

JONCAT