[FR] Ability to sync with the CardDAV server of Fastmail

[zenminimalist]

I know FM uses standard CardDAV. Not sure if this is out of scope, but it would be nice if Obsidian could sync with my Fastmail CardDAV server. I'm aware of potential risk 😊

[roleohibachi]

Have you tested whether it works already, by providing the fastmail server settings and your credentials? Mine "just worked" with the Nextcloud CardDAV server!

https://www.fastmail.help/hc/en-us/articles/1500000278342-Server-names-and-ports#contacts

Server https://carddav.fastmail.com/
Username Your Fastmail email address, including the domain.
Password Your app-specific password. You cannot use your regular Fastmail password.

[broekema41]

Good morning @zenminimalist, I must say happy to see people trying out all the different integration options. below the article found on app passwords for fastmail https://www.fastmail.help/hc/en-us/articles/360058752854-App-passwords. Have not tested this integration myself but davx5 is mentioned and that one it in our developement stack. please do let us know if you manage in the end.

Will close this issue in a couple days.

[zenminimalist]

I'll have to test the "full" sync with Fastmail, but I've imported all my contacts first for now just to test.

Issue I've noticed during the manual import:
Inconsistent contact photo synchronization between Obsidian and Fastmail/CardDAV.

Several contact photos are missing after the initial import. I suspect the issue lies in the VCard photo URI formatting. It appears that photos failing to sync are missing the standard Base64 header prefix: data:image/jpeg;base64,.

Proposed solution (?) for import/sync engine:

Validation: During the import/sync process, the plugin should check the PHOTO property of the VCard.

Auto-Correction: If the photo data exists but is missing the data URI scheme, the plugin should automatically prepend the correct MIME type header (e.g., data:image/jpeg;base64, or data:image/png;base64,) based on the data signature.

Encoding check: Ensure that the image data is strictly Base64 encoded and stripped of any illegal line breaks that could break the YAML frontmatter parsing.

I know FM does not currently support vCard 4, only v3 like many other providers. So I'm not sure if that would be an issue or possible.

[broekema41]

just for your reference: The PHOTO field is a bit of a troublemaker when it comes to sync, tools, app interoperability. if there is a avatar already loaded into obsidian we will not overwrite it with external data. For import plain public url amd the following formats.

import { parsePhotoParams } from "src/util/photoLine";
import { describe, expect, it } from 'vitest';

const fixtures = [
  {
    name: "v3 base64 JPEG (no TYPE key)",
    input: "PHOTO;ENCODING=BASE64;JPEG:randomvalue",
    expected: { mimeType: "jpeg", base64Data: "randomvalue" },
  },
  {
    name: "v3 TYPE=JPEG ENCODING=b",
    input: "PHOTO;TYPE=JPEG;ENCODING=b:randomvalue",
    expected: { mimeType: "jpeg", base64Data: "randomvalue" },
  },
  {
    name: "v3 ENCODING=b TYPE=PNG",
    input: "PHOTO;ENCODING=b;TYPE=PNG:randomvalue",
    expected: { mimeType: "png", base64Data: "randomvalue" },
  },
  {
    name: "v4 data:image/jpeg;base64",
    input: "PHOTO:data:image/jpeg;base64,randomvalue",
    expected: { mimeType: "jpeg", base64Data: "randomvalue" },
  },
  {
    name: "v4 data:image/png;base64",
    input: "PHOTO:data:image/png;base64,randomvalue",
    expected: { mimeType: "png", base64Data: "randomvalue" },
  },
  {
    name: "v4 data:image/png;base64 with a malformed start",
    input: "PHOTO;data:image/png;base64,randomvalue",
    expected: { mimeType: "png", base64Data: "randomvalue" },
  },
];



describe('photoLines', () => {
  describe("Should be able to parse photo vCard params in v3 and v4 format", () => {
    fixtures.forEach(({ name, input, expected }) => {
      it(`should parse ${name}`, () => {
        const result = parsePhotoParams(input);
        expect(result).toMatchObject(expected);
      });
    });
  });
});

[karmanyaahm]

For future reference, I had to follow these conventions:

Personal contacts:

Server address: https://carddav.fastmail.com/dav/addressbooks/user/<username@domain.tld>/Default
    Replace <username@domain.tld> with your full Fastmail username, including the domain.
    Example: for trythis@example.com the address is https://carddav.fastmail.com/dav/addressbooks/user/trythis@example.com/Default
Username: <username>+Default@<domain.tld>
    Note the additional +Default between your username and domain.
    Example: for trythis@example.com the username is trythis+Default@example.com

From this link: https://www.fastmail.help/hc/en-us/articles/1500000278342-Server-names-and-ports#contacts