Viewpoint for Exchange Web Services

Viewpoint for EWS provides a thin Ruby layer on top of Microsoft Exchange Web Services(EWS). It also includes a bunch of model classes that add an additional layer of abstraction on top of EWS for use in implementing programs with Viewpoint.

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Features

New in 1.0

• SOAP backend is now only dependant on Nokogiri. Before version 1.0 Viewpoint went through a number of iterations in backends including SOAP4r and Handsoap. Each of these approaches had major issues so in the end I decided it was easiest to just build the SOAP messages with Nokogiri since I was using it as the parser for response messages already.

• Viewpoint is no longer built on a Singleton pattern. The reason it was previously is because of the Handsoap backend. Handsoap itself uses a Singleton pattern for connection to the SOAP endpoint so with authentication I was forced to implement Viewpoint as a Singleton as well. Now with Handsoap out of the picture this is no longer required. Go crazy ;)

Enhanced in 1.0

• Delegate access is supported One thing that was often asked for, but missing from the previous version was delegate access to mailboxes and calendars. This is now supported via the act_as parameter to the GenericFolder::get_folder method.

Inbox example: inbox = Folder.get_folder(:inbox, opts = {act_as: "user@host.com"})

If your user has delegate access to the Inbox for user@host.com this operation will retrieve their inbox and allow you to manipulate it as you would with your own Inbox.

Calendar example: calendar = cli.get_folder(:calendar, opts = {act_as: "user@host.com"})

If your user has delegate access to the Calendar for user@host.com this operation will retrieve their calendar and allow you to manipulate it as you would with your own Calendar, depending on the permissions the other user has granted you.

• There is also some support for manipulation of delegate access itself via the methods MailboxUser#add_delegate!, MailboxUser#update_delegate!, and MailboxUser#get_delegate_info.

Using Viewpoint

The version 1.0 API is quite a departure from the 0.1.x code base. If you have a lot of legacy code and aren't suffering from performance issues, think twice about upgrading. That said, I hope you'll find the new API much clean and more intuitive than previous versions.

I also try and document the code to the base of my ability. Included in that code are links to the official Microsoft EWS documentation that might be helpful when troubleshooting "interesting" issues. You can either generate the documentation yourself with yard or check it out on rdoc.info.

Note the cli variable in the setup code directly below. I will use that variable throughout without the setup code.

The Setup

require 'viewpoint'
include Viewpoint::EWS

endpoint = 'https://example.com/ews/Exchange.asmx'
user = 'username'
pass = 'password'

cli = Viewpoint::EWSClient.new endpoint, user, pass

There are also various options you can pass to EWSClient.

If you are testing in an environment using a self-signed certificate you can pass a connection parameter to ignore SSL verification by passing http_opts: {ssl_verify_mode: 0}.

If you want to target a specific version of Exchange you can pass server_version: SOAP::ExchangeWebService::VERSION_2010_SP1. You really shouldn't have to use this unless you know why. If you are interacting with servers which you do not know the version(s) of, an incorrect version may manifest as a SoapResponseError or a HTTP 400 ResponseError. Note that different versions are particular; for example, VERSION_2007 may not work against a VERSION_2007_SP1 system.

Accessors

There are some basic accessors available on the Viewpoint::EWSClient instance. In prior versions these were typically class methods off of the models themselves (ex: Folder.get_folder(id)). Now all accessors are available through EWSClient.

Folder Accessors

Listing Folders

# Find all folders under :msgfolderroot
folders = cli.folders

# Find all folders under Inbox
inbox_folders = cli.folders root: :inbox

# Find all folders under :root and do a Deep search
all_folders = cli.folders root: :root, traversal: :deep

Finding single folders

# If you know the EWS id
cli.get_folder <folder_id>
# ... or if it's a standard folder pass its symbol
cli.get_folder :index
# or by name
cli.get_folder_by_name 'test'
# by name as a subfolder under "Inbox"
cli.get_folder_by_name 'test', parent: :inbox

Creating/Deleting a folder

# make a folder under :msgfolderroot
cli.make_folder 'myfolder'

# make a folder under Inbox
my_folder = cli.make_folder 'My Stuff', parent: :inbox

# make a new Tasks folder
tasks = cli.make_folder 'New Tasks', type: :tasks

# delete a folder
my_folder.delete!

Item Accessors

Finding items

items = inbox.items

# for today
inbox.todays_items

# since a specific date
sd = Date.iso8601 '2013-01-01'
inbox.items_since sd

# between 2 dates
sd = Date.iso8601 '2013-01-01'
ed = Date.iso8601 '2013-02-01'
inbox.items_between sd, ed

Free/Busy Calendar Accessors

# Find when a user is busy
require 'time'
start_time = DateTime.parse("2013-02-19").iso8601
end_time = DateTime.parse("2013-02-20").iso8601
user_free_busy = cli.get_user_availability(['joe.user@exchange.site.com'],
  start_time: start_time,
  end_time:   end_time,
  requested_view: :free_busy)
busy_times = user_free_busy.calendar_event_array

# Parse events from the calendar event array for start/end times and type
busy_times.each { | event |
  cli.event_busy_type(event)
  cli.event_start_time(event)
  cli.event_end_time(event)
}

# Find the user's working hours
user_free_busy.working_hours

Mailbox Accessors

• No examples yet

Message Accessors

cli.send_message subject: "Test", body: "Test", to_recipients: ['test@example.com']

# or
cli.send_message do |m|
  m.subject = "Test"
  m.body    = "Test"
  m.to_recipients << 'test@example.com'
  m.to_recipients << 'test2@example.com'
end

# set :draft => true or use cli.draft_message to only create a draft and not send.

Thanks go out to...

• Handl.it for sponsoring a good portion of the development effort.
  • https://www.handle.com/
• The National Association of REALTORS® for providing a testing account and much appreciated input and support.
• The Holmes Group Limited for providing Exchange 2013 test accounts.

DISCLAIMER:

If you see something that could be done better or would like to help out in the development of this code please feel free to clone the 'git' repository and send me patches: git clone git://github.com/zenchild/Viewpoint.git or add an issue on GitHub: http://github.com/zenchild/Viewpoint/issues

Cheers!