Re: zogi - birthDate attribute of Contact

> When a contact has no birthDate, the type returned is <string>, when a 
> date has been entered for a contact (through the webui), the contact 
> returned via zogi has a birthdate of type of dateTime.iso8601. I'm 
> guessing this is not an issue for people using a xml-rpc library in 
> Python, or .Net, 

No, it really is an issue! :)  Currently the .NET bindings for zOGI
<http://code.google.com/p/consonance/> ignore the birthdate attribute;
my users haven't need that attribute yet,  in Consonance the field
appears but is no-op.

> but I'm just parsing the raw xml returned.  Should this 
> be classified as a bug?

Yes.

> I wasn't sure how to give feedback on zogi, 

<http://code.google.com/p/zogi/issues/list> and on this list.

> so I left a comment about this on the zogi wiki, 

This is a tough issue as each environment treats dates differently,
most XML-RPC bindings don't provide a NULL type, etc.... In .NET a date
value can't be null (stupid!) so it is common to use the MinValue of
DateTime to represent an undefined date.   I've looked around and not
found a nice and clean solution to this issue.   I may just have to
adopt the same solution - making 1001-01-01 indicate no-value-defined.
Would that be acceptable for what you need?  But this requires an
if/else construct in the client protocol handler - which is something in
zOGI I've been trying to avoid as much as possible (protocol wrappers
should be thin).

BTW,  I've also started journaling changes and other stuff to Ohloh's
journal feature since it is *really* easy (I just fire off a message
from my XMPP client; no creating BLOG posts, etc...).  If you want
change notification and typically run an XMPP/Jabber client that would
be a way to stay in the loop that requires almost zero effort.

<http://www.ohloh.net/projects/OpenGroupware>
<http://www.ohloh.net/projects/zOGI>
<http://www.ohloh.net/projects/Consonance>


> then remembered there was this list so thought I'd post 
> here too.

Correct.

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