Secretary Links - Android

CalDAV-based website change monitor. Stores monitored URLs as VJOURNAL entries in /links/-namespace collections (unprefixed, since v23). Each link has a URL, description, and RRULE that determines how often the app checks for content changes.

What it does

• Watches websites you select and tells you when they change
• Each entry has a URL, title and description; an optional RRULE decides how often it is re-checked
• Cheap re-checks first: ETag and Last-Modified, then a SHA-256 content hash when the server sends neither
• Favicons are fetched once and stored with the entry
• Notification when a page changed, with a link straight to it
• Share links into the app from other apps, open entries in the browser
• Full CalDAV sync through the shared Secretary client, so entries exist on your own server

Changelog

Every released version: Apps/links/changelog

Screenshots

Features

• Add website URLs with title and description
• RRULE-based scheduling for periodic change detection (optional)
• SHA-256 content hashing for reliable change recognition
• ETag and Last-Modified headers for efficient re-checks
• Favicons fetched and stored as base64 in VJOURNAL
• Push notifications when changes are detected
• Status icons on every row: warning (changed) and cloud-off (not reachable, server 0.31.0) to the left of the favicon, since v36
• Share links to/from other apps
• Open links in browser
• Folders: tags as TAG: in CATEGORIES, first tag = folder, list groups by folder (v38)
• Per-check Link geprüft notification plus one aggregated change summary (v38)
• Single canonical collection main by default; collection management behind the shared Sammlungs-Nutzung setting (v38)
• Full CalDAV sync via secretary-common-android

Architecture

• Package: org.beowulf.secretary.links
• VJOURNAL format in /links/ collections (via common CaldavClient)
• X-LINK-* custom properties for URL, hash, etag, last-modified, last-checked, last-error
• RRULE stored in CATEGORIES as RRULE:FREQ=DAILY;INTERVAL=1
• AlarmManager for scheduled checks
• OkHttp for website fetching

Build

export ANDROID_HOME="$HOME/Android/Sdk"   # bzw. sdk.dir=... in local.properties

gradle :links:assembleDebug              # Debug-APK
gradle :links:testDebugUnitTest          # Unit-Tests

Release: gradle :links:assembleRelease (signiert, braucht signing.properties)

Server Reference

• secretary-server (CalDAV/CardDAV, Rust): ~/Projects/secretary/
  • Tremere: https://tremere:8443
• Server-side link checker secretary-server-links is part of the secretary-server deb since 0.28.0 (no separate package/unit); the server runs it on the [links] interval (active = true, interval = "30m", server 0.29.0).
• Failed fetches are recorded on the link itself since server 0.31.0 as X-LINK-LAST-ERROR:<message> in the DESCRIPTION (single line, max. 300 chars, empty value = healthy, cleared again on the next successful fetch); the checker then still exits 0, so the server's addon loop stays quiet.