Contacts, calendars and tasks sync aka caldav/cardav

WebDAV is a set of extensions to the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). Caldav is a Calendaring Extension to WebDAV. CardDav is a vCard Extensions to WebDAV. Webcal is a uniform resource identifier (URI) scheme for accessing iCalendar files.

Contacts and calendars are major sync components on mobile devices, as are tasks, journals and mostly notes.

Two of the most popular calendar and contacts sync servers are radicale and Baikal.

The most stable, enterprise level app on android that can handle Caldav, carddav and webcal protocols is Davx5.

An android app that can sync notes,tasks and journals using a cardDacmv server is jtxBoard.

On top of that we can have radicale and Baikal running on Docker and most importantly behind reverse proxy with mutual TLS client certificates authentication.

docker-radicale

Radicale is a small but powerful CalDAV (calendars, to-do lists) and CardDAV (contacts) server

• Github repo

• configuration file

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
services:
  radicale:
    image: tomsquest/docker-radicale
    container_name: radicale
    ports:
      - 5232:5232
    init: true
    read_only: true
    security_opt:
      - no-new-privileges:true
    healthcheck:
      test: curl -f http://127.0.0.1:5232 || exit 1
      interval: 30s
      retries: 3
    restart: unless-stopped
    volumes:
      - ./data:/data
      - ./config:/config:ro
      - ./users:/etc/radicale/users

Tips & tricks

configuration file

create a config directory in the working dir

mkdir -p config

copy the configuration file from the link above into the config folder

Basic auth

Uncomment/Enable the following in the configuration file

[auth] type = htpasswd htpasswd_filename = /etc/radicale/users htpasswd_encryption = md5

htpasswd

flat-file used to store usernames and password for basic authentication

While in the working dir

htpasswd -c users username New password: Re-type new password:

docker-Baikal

lightweight CalDAV+CardDAV server. It offers an extensive web interface with easy management of users, address books and calendars. It is fast and simple to install and only needs a basic php capable server. The data can be stored in a MySQL or a SQLite database.

• Github repo
• website
• examples

mkdir -p config Specific

chown -R 101:101 config Specific

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
services:
  baikal:
    image: ckulka/baikal:nginx
    depends_on:
      - baikal-db
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - "8456:80"
    volumes:
      - ./config:/var/www/baikal/config
      - ./Specific:/var/www/baikal/Specific
    networks:
      - baikal-network

  baikal-db:
    image: mariadb:latest
    restart: unless-stopped
    volumes:
      - ./mysql-data:/var/lib/mysql
      - ./mysql:/etc/mysql/conf.d
    ports:
      - "4406:3306"
    environment:
      - MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=rootpassword
      - MYSQL_DATABASE=baikal-db
      - MYSQL_USER=user
      - MYSQL_PASSWORD=password
    networks:
      - baikal-network

networks:
 baikal-network:

Tips & tricks

Create admin user Toggle mysql Use hostip:dbport e.g. 192.168.1.24:4406 Then create a user

Android

Davx⁵

It can sync with a large list of services, you can review them here

For radicale the base sync URL should be (/) https://server.example.com/radicale/

For Baikal the base sync URL should be (/dav.php/) https://server.example/dav.php/

For mutual TLS you must install your client certificate to your android user cert store. Then on the initial setup screen under advanced login setup user,password and select the cert.

jtxBoard

It allows you to manage your Journals , Notes and Tasks in one Android app. The app is compatible with the iCal standard (RFC5545) and is integrated with DAVx5 to allow the synchronisation of entries through CalDAV.

• Github repo

For Joplin import

Read

For Config

No need to configure anything really. It works with Davx⁵ out of the box. Once you set up Davx⁵ it will start sync to you carddav server.

enjoy