Org VCard

[[https://melpa.org/#/org-incoming][]]

This is org-vcard, a package to convert VCards to Org and vice versa.

• Author::
  • Alexis flexibeast@gmail.com
  • Will Dey will123dey@gmail.com
  • pinoaffe pinoaffe@gmail.com
• URL: https://github.com/pinoaffe/org-vcard

As of march 2024, I (pinoaffe) have taken over maintainership of org-vcard.

org-vcard is a package for exporting and importing vCards from within GNU Emacs’ Org mode.

Features

• Backwards-compatible with org-contacts.el.

  org-vcard comes with a built-in contacts style called flat, which adheres to org-contacts’ method of structuring contacts and contact information. It not only supports the properties specified in org-contacts.el, but many other properties as well.

• Basic support for vCard 4.0, 3.0 and 2.1.

  org-vcard is working towards full compliance with the vCard 4.0 (RFC 6350), 3.0 (RFC 2426 and RFC 4770) and 2.1 specifications.

• New contacts style: =tree=.

  org-vcard introduces a new style for Org contacts, called tree. More details below.

• Highly customisable, via Emacs’ =customize= interface.

  Modify existing contact styles; change the labels used to map contact details in org-mode to various vCard properties/types, or add new ones. Create completely new contact styles by plugging in your own code to handle export and import.

Installation

Install org-vcard from MELPA, MELPA Stable, or put the org-vcard folder in your load-path and do a (require 'org-vcard).

Usage

The main user commands are org-vcard-export and org-vcard-import, which are intended to be called interactively; you can press TAB at many of the minibuffer prompts to get a list of the available options for a prompt.

Both org-vcard-export and org-vcard-import are wrappers around the org-vcard-transfer-helper function. org-vcard-transfer-helper can be used to export and import programmatically (i.e. via Emacs Lisp).

Enabling org-vcard-mode will add an “Org-vCard” menu to the menu bar, from which one can access the various export, import and customisation options.

Note! When exporting to vCard using the source buffer, narrowing is respected. If you wish to export the entire buffer without restriction, remove any narrowing in effect.

For a list of the properties available by default for each contacts style and related vCard versions, visit the “Org Vcard Styles Languages Mappings” setting in the Org Vcard customize group, or examine the value of the org-vcard--styles-languages-mappings variable.

Note! The default mappings might need to be tweaked for particular use-cases. For example, some systems create vCards with a bare TEL property, whereas others use TEL;TYPE=voice; but both are mapped to the Org PHONE property (for flat style) or phone FIELDTYPE (for tree style). In this case, the customize interface could be used to delete whichever of the two mappings is unwanted.

The value of the org-vcard-include-import-unknowns (boolean) variable specifies whether the import process should include vCard properties not listed in the mapping being used.

The value of the org-vcard-append-to-existing-import-buffer and org-vcard-append-to-existing-export-buffer (boolean) variables specify whether the import/export process should append to any existing import/export buffer. If not, a new import/export buffer is created for each import/export.

The tree contacts style

The structure of the tree contacts style is:

* [Contact name]
:PROPERTIES:
:KIND: individual
:FIELDTYPE: name
:END:
** [Information type]
*** [Information value]
:PROPERTIES:
:FIELDTYPE: [Field type]
[:PREFERRED:]
:END:

Here’s an example:

* Joan Smith
:PROPERTIES:
:KIND: individual
:FIELDTYPE: name
:END:
** Mobile
*** 0000 999 999
:PROPERTIES:
:FIELDTYPE: cell
:END:
** Email
*** Work
**** address1@hidden
:PROPERTIES:
:FIELDTYPE: email-work
:PREFERRED:
:END:
*** Home
**** address2@hidden
:PROPERTIES:
:FIELDTYPE: email-home
:END:

As the tree style uses a heading’s FIELDTYPE property to associate fields with their data, the above hierarchy is only one way to structure contacts; equivalently, one could do:

* People
** Joan Smith
:PROPERTIES:
:KIND: individual
:FIELDTYPE: name
:END:
*** Cell
**** 0000 999 999
:PROPERTIES:
:FIELDTYPE: cell
:END:
*** Email
**** address1@hidden
:PROPERTIES:
:FIELDTYPE: email-work
:PREFERRED:
:END:
**** address2@hidden
:PROPERTIES:
:FIELDTYPE: email-home
:END:

TODOs

Things that need work:

• Add support for one-vCard-per-file export.
• Add support for line folding when exporting.
• Add support for multiple instances of EMAIL property.
• Add support for vCard PREF for style flat.
• Add support for vCard KINDs group and org.
• Add support for per-card version handling on import.
• Improve compliance with each version of the vCard specification.
• Extend test coverage.
• Write (and use) a proper vCard parser.

Issues / bugs

If you discover an issue or bug in org-vcard not already noted:

• as a TODO item, or
• in the project’s “Issues” section on GitHub,

please create a new issue with as much detail as possible, including:

• which version of Emacs you’re running on which operating system, and
• how you installed org-vcard.

Testing

A basic test suite is located in the repository tests directory, in org-vcard-tests.el. To run the suite:

1. Ensure org-vcard.el has been loaded, e.g. =(load “~/org-vcard/org-vcard.el”)=.
2. Load the test suite: e.g. =(load “~/org-vcard/tests/org-vcard-tests.el”)=.
3. Run the tests by evaluating (ert '(tag org-vcard)).

License

GNU General Public License version 3, or (at your option) any later version.