How do I implement activesync protocol in iphone app?

Question

How do I implement activesync protocol in iphone app? Any advice, any docs and tutorials are well come.

I have read the Exchange ActiveSync and iOS 4 Devices from apple. Is there any real docs for this?

Answer 1

It is hard, but not impossible to write an app which communicates via exchange active sync. The link to the Exchange Server Protocols in Jons answer contains a document named MS-ASWBXML. You have to write an encoder for wbxml on your own and the document describes clearly the needs. Additionaly I recommend strongly this document: http://www.w3.org/TR/wbxml/

If the low level is working, you have to implement the EAS-protocol on top ob wbxml, which is not trivial, because of bugs in the documentation, different behaviour of different protocol versions. It will be a lot of trial an error to examine, why the exchange server does not understand your requests ;-)

Answer 2

Despite having asked a question in the comment, you might be looking for the Microsoft documentation of the Exchange Server Protocols.

If you're thinking of implementing your own client though, I would strongly advise you to pause and consider whether it's really worth it. As someone who's worked on a server-side implementation of these protocols, I can tell you they can get pretty complicated - and the documentation doesn't always give you enough information. (In some areas it's flat out wrong, too.)

Answer 3

Using Apple's built in support just means using Apple's APIs for writing to the Address Book and Calendar Store on the phone. Your app isn't supposed to know anything about the way that data is synchronised: it just happens in the background.

If you want direct control over the synchronisation process, then Apple's APIs cannot help you. Jon Skeet's answer contains a link to Microsoft's protocol documentation, but as he mentioned you'll be setting yourself up for a world of pain.

Answer 4

EAS is really meant for device makers to implement and not normal application development. You should look over the ActiveSync Protocol documentation and look into licensing the protocol (yeah its a pay-for license) and then ask yourself if its worth all the trouble to write all the business logic, ecoding logic, intensive testing and the licensing. An alternative is to use Exchange Web Services (EWS), which might be a much better fit - more rhobust in many areas and no licensing needed.

You should also look at this: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/webdav_101/archive/2011/09/29/new-to-exchange-activesync-development.aspx