7
2007
SyncTheMilk: Business logic in Groovy, UI in Java
An article by Glen
I’m getting close to my first release of SyncTheMilk, my little Outlook and RememberTheMilk task synchronisation tool. Most of the business logic is done, and I’m starting work on the UI makeover right now.
One of the interesting features of the app is that while the UI is written completely in Java, and all of the core business logic is in Groovy.
One of the things that I truly love about the Groovy community is that we are, on the whole, a bunch of pragmatists. We’re mostly practitioners. We use Groovy where is makes sense, and makes our life simpler, and drop back to Java when it doesn’t.
For SyncTheMilk, the business logic does tons of xml/http to the RTM API service (XmlSlurper rocks so hard!), a little bit of Crypto, lot of work with the Outlook COM model (via Scriptom), and has pluggable Sync drivers, so I should, in theory, be able to Sync RememberTheMilk to just about anything!
Groovy makes all of those things simple, so it made sense to write all of the Business Logic in Groovy. But when it came to the UI, I’ve found I’m much more productive with some sort of visual designer, so SWT Designer just made so much sense. (FD: I have a free copy, it’s not cheap but it is just amazing)
Anyways, will have something to show in a couple of weeks. Planning on a free version and a pro version to raise a little money for charity. Not sure if there are other Commercial Groovy desktop apps out there… Should be an interesting experiment!
About the Author: Glen Smith
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Glen Smith
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Are you able to let me know when this is ready to try, please: rhirsch at smss dot com
Thanks!
Will do.
Awesome to see this idea.
Keep me posted arvid(at)oetzitterd.nl even whilling to be a beta-tester and to pay afterwards for the app!
Glenn… I cant wait to get my hands on this! Thanks in Advance
add me to your beta list also, please!!
revjscox(at)yahoo(dot)com
Please also add me to your beta tester list!
Thanks for your intereste guys. I’m working toward a new version for next week. Will keep you all posted. It’s not quite “beta” yet… I’m calling it “early access” for now…
Please sign me up! Thanks for doing this!
count me in too as a beta tester. i’ve been looking for this for ages beacause i am a linux user at home and a windoze user at work.
thank you in advance for your efforts
darren
I would be more than happy to “early access” test as well. I am on Outlook 2007 on Vista Ultimate. This is, without doubt, something I have been waiting to see someone tackle (I would have but I don’t have an appropriate skill set).
As an aside, have you considered syncing the various lists, or tags in RTM to Categories in Outlook?
For sure! That’s supported in the current version. You can mark which lists should get synced from RTM and they’ll be come categories on the Outlook side.
Hi Guys, RTM have now released their own Sync client, so you can now download a copy of MilkSync from there. Obviously, I’m stopping work on SyncTheMilk since RTM now have their own solution. Thanks for your support, it was fun to work on!
My understanding is that MilkSync is for Windows Mobile only. Have you resumed development on your app that works with Outlook 2003?
Chris, MilkSync is the first in a suite of RTM products that cover syncing which is likely to include an Outlook version at some time. Third parties are discouraged from working in that space, so I’ve moved on to other plans. Thanks for your interest.