iCloud Synchronisation

[Dabendorf]

I know there have been discussions on how to backup files properly. But lets be honest. In the iOS-App, it would be amazing to synchronise bookmarks between devices. I often make bookmark lists on an iPad and then use it physically on the iPhone when hiking. It’s such a shame to try to keep lists on both devices synchronised.

[biodranik]

We ideally want to:

1. Avoid doing different implementations for iOS and Android to save development and support time
2. Share bookmarks across different platforms (iOS, Android, Web)
3. Properly merge conflicting bookmark changes
4. Share bookmarks between different users

So doing just iCloud is ok for some users, but is not ideal. Also see #622

[Volodymyr-13]

@biodranik

I've carefully considered your points about cross-platform bookmarks sync, but I'd like to advocate for a different approach. Let's focus solely on delivering the best possible experience for iOS users since everything is ready for this.

iOS users tend to appreciate and rely on high-quality services, and by dedicating our efforts to iOS, we can ensure a top-notch bookmark sync experience using iCloud.
Android, being a more fragmented and diverse platform, may pose challenges that could divert resources and lead to a compromised user experience. By concentrating on iOS, we can prioritize excellence and maintain a smooth development process.

Regarding handling syncing conflicts for bookmarks, one approach that we can consider is to use timestamps for our Bookmark objects. By introducing timestamps, we can track the last modification date of each bookmark during synchronization.

To gain insights into how to resolve merge conflicts effectively, we can refer to open-source projects like Automattic's Simplenote iOS app (https://github.com/Automattic/simplenote-ios).

Additionally, we can find valuable information on conflict resolution strategies in the open-source Sample CloudKit Core Data Sync app by Apple (https://github.com/apple/sample-cloudkit-coredatasync). Although it's not specifically bookmarks-related, we can adapt similar approaches to handle conflicts in our bookmark sync implementation.

Sound good? :)

[Volodymyr-13]

And currently, there's no auto-backup for Bookmarks in OrganicMaps at all.
So, if users remove the app from their iOS device, all their bookmarks are gone.

[biodranik]

Starting from iCloud is a good idea. There are already timestamps in bookmarks. Taking them into an account would be enough. It is exactly that "merge-related" code that I meant. It should be written anyway.

[Dabendorf]

I think this should be a priority thing for further development. It is so easy to miss your data and all of the bookmarks just if you lose the phone, delete the app and whatever. And moving stuff to a new phone is equally painful since every list needs to be exported manually

[biodranik]

We all completely agree with the priority. Any volunteers to help?

[rtsisyk]

Let's keep #2678 as more detailed.