add option to store data in iCloud drive

[aaronpk]

In order to make it easier for more people to use this without setting up an http server like Compass, it'd be great if the app could write the data to a file that is synced via iCloud drive. This way, the location data would be available on your desktop without needing to run a server.

Please 👍 if this is something you're interested in!

[koorscolors]

I wish I had the skills to help build this with ya, but I am going to try to set up the compass server first (I have never done that sort of thing before).
Your app comes closer than any other I have found for simply logging geo-data and dropping it into a db.. its wild so many other apps are so bloated and expensive in this regard. I have a simple goal of logging my geo-data every day and simply sending it to cloud storage on regular intervals so that it doesn't take up space locally on my phone and/or I don't need to plug the phone in constantly. Ive been surprised I haven't found any apps that offer this functionality!

[aaronpk]

well you get what you pay for I guess 😂 But for real I'd love to get this feature in, but I have no experience with file management on iOS, so I'm starting from scratch there.

There's a few open questions for how this could work.

It could work like the Compass server where it writes a file per day, where each line in the file is one JSON record. The resulting file is not parsable as JSON, but it's easy to parse in any language. The nice thing about this is adding data to the file is simple because you only ever have to append data, you don't need to load the whole file into memory first.

Alternatively, it could write files as GeoJSON so they would be more immediately usable in other applications. However, that means adding data to the file requires first reading the whole contents, parsing as JSON, then appending records and writing the file again.

The next question is how often to create a new file. Every day sounds simple, but starts to get complicated when you're dealing with timezone changes, since the phone's timezone might either skip a day or have the same day transition twice. Compass solves this by recording everything in UTC. Another option would be to only write files for trips, that gives a clear file break point.

So I can't promise anything on this front, but do comment below with your use cases and how you'd want it to work, and maybe someone can step in to start building it.