Hi.

I'm writing a synchronization script that syncs users A, B, and C's 
contacts with user D's contacts (all in GMail/contacts -- no 3rd party 
contacts). I am attempting to accomplish this without having to retain any 
information between syncs.

When comparing contacts, my program decides what contact to update by 
checking the "updated" property from two similar entry objects (say, "Joe 
Smith" from user A and "Joe Smith" from user D). It then can determine 
which contact was  updated most recently and update the other accordingly. 
The problem is that when appropriate contact gets updated, the next sync 
will see a more recent "updated" property on that contact and then sync in 
the other direction. Since this and subsequent syncs between these contacts 
doesn't actually update anything (the contact's data is identical), Google 
does not update the "updated" property on the associated contact. So now 
every time the app runs, a wasted attempt at syncing two identical contacts 
fires off. 

This method actually works, since nothing is changed on the false syncs, 
but it is ugly and wastes network and computer resources (not to mention 
time). Does anyone have an idea how I can work around this issue? Keep in 
mind I don't want to save any data between syncs. I've tried using a "jot" 
to mark the contacts being compared with identical "time stamps", then I 
used this value in conjunction with the "updated" property to decide if and 
which way to sync. The implementation has started getting (too) complex and 
ugly, so I thought I'd ask here before continuing that path.

Thanks for any help you can provide!

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