A critical piece of functionality and a first milestone for EdenMobile is, and has always been, the exchange of data with the Eden Server.

For that to happen, Em has now received a new “emSync” component, which talks to the server’s REST API, in the native S3JSON data format.

We have also extended the server API with a new “mform” method that provides the data model and form specs for Em. The mform method, unlike the low-level-introspective create.s3json, provides server-side configuration hooks and customization options – and is thus more in line with Eden’s application template concept.

EmSync isn’t complete yet, but working so far that it can exchange master resource data with the server – component resource support being the next thing to add.

A longer-term challenge for emSync will be to move away from the current comparison-based hub-spoke concept towards a delta-based, distributed resource model (think Git) – which is a much better strategy for mutable data in single-user+multi-instance scenarios (as opposed to Eden’s single-instance+multi-user situation).

Obviously, delta-sync will also require the Eden server to learn a number of new tricks 😉 so another pair of eyes and hands (or two, or three) is certainly wanted here!

Anyway – for now, we’re happy that Em can collect data offline and report them back to the Eden server as commanded.