Address Book: Bridging with a contact management app?

[shigoto chuu]

Hello,

I  have a contact manage app that allows users to add/edit/delete contacts and their information.  I am looking to bridge my application with Roundcube's address book so that I can add/edit/delete contact information from my app within Roundcube's address book.  And to also preserve as much functionality I can from the mail side of things.  For example, when clicking on a contact from within the address book, it will still allow you to compose a message to that person.  Note that I am using Roundcube 0.5.2 and the version cannot be changed.

Currently my app can handle HTTP requests allowing users to retrieve contact information through GET requests or add/edit contacts through PUT/POST requests (the requests have an XML body).  So that is one possible method, but it sounds like it would require a lot of modification into the Roundcube side.

Another possible option would be to "tear out" the Roundcube address book and embed my own application.  Although, I am still new to Roundcube so this may not be possible.

I was wondering if anyone here could help guide me in the correct direction on how to handle this situation.

[SKaero]

Why not just connect directly to the RoundCube database and then you can read and write contacts directly to the database.

[shigoto chuu]

I guess that is a possible option but there are a lot of other things that depend on the contacts table in my contact management app.  Sorry, I should have mentioned that earlier so I am not just confusing anyone.

So I hope to not replace the contact management app's database.  Although, if it is a matter of replacing Roundcube's contacts database with my contact management app's contact database.  How feasible is that?  Or should I still consider one of the other options I mentioned?

[SKaero]

So you just want to keep both databases in sync? Does the non RoundCube database need to be able to read and write contacts?

[shigoto chuu]

I don't necessarily need to keep any databases in sync.  I mainly just want to be able to edit Contact info from my app's database, from the Roundcube interface.  And yes, the non-Roundcube database (my app's contact database) needs to be able to read/write contacts because I want to allow users to edit contact information from my app as well.

[SKaero]

It probably best then to write changes from the other app to RoundCube's database and to make a RoundCube plugin that save changes to your apps database.

[shigoto chuu]

How difficult would it be to have Roundcube use my app's contact database?  Would that require tons of modification on Roundcube's side?

[SKaero]

I guess you could code a plugin that would pull directly out the other apps database, you should take a look at Global AddressBook plugin and see if you could customize it to work with your other system https://github.com/JohnDoh/Roundcube-Plugin-Global-Address-Book/

[okiter]

I’m also exploring this issue