vCard
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Filename extension | .vcf, .vcard |
---|---|
Internet media type | text/x-vcard |
Type code | vCrd |
Uniform Type Identifier | public.vcard |
Developed by | Internet Mail Consortium |
Type of format | electronic business card |
Container for | contact information |
vCard is a file format standard for electronic business cards. vCards are often attached to e-mail messages, but can be exchanged in other ways, such as on the World Wide Web. They can contain name and address information, phone numbers, URLs, logos, photographs, and even audio clips.
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[edit] History
The vCard or Versitcard was originally proposed in 1995 by the Versit consortium, which consisted of Apple, AT&T Technologies (later Lucent), IBM and Siemens. In December 1996, ownership of the format was handed over to the Internet Mail Consortium, a trade association for companies with an interest in Internet e-mail.
vCard is accompanied by a proposed standard for exchanging data about forthcoming appointments called vCalendar since superseded by iCalendar; the Internet Mail Consortium has issued a statement that it "hopes that all vCalendar developers take advantage of these new open standards and make their software compatible with both vCalendar 1.0 and iCalendar."
Version 2.1 of the vCard standard is widely supported by e-mail clients. Version 3.0 of the vCard format is an IETF standards-track proposal contained in RFC 2425 and RFC 2426. The vCardDAV working group of the IETF is updating the vCard format. The commonly-used filename extension for vCards is .vcf.
[edit] Derivatives and Applications
The hCard microformat, a 1:1 representation of vCard in semantic (X)HTML, allows publishers to embed vCard data in web pages. There are browser extensions such as Operator for Firefox; and technologies such as X2V and BC2, that convert such hCards into vCards, thus providing interoperability between hCards published on the web, and the aforementioned vCard clients.
An XML vCard format has been defined by the XMPP Standards Foundation and is in use with technologies such as XMPP and Light-Weight Identity. W3C has published a note on RDF-based encoding for vCard (see Representing vCard Objects in RDF/XML).
Sending vCards by Bluetooth is one of the most broadly compatible but inelegant forms of placecasting. Since sending vCards via Bluetooth does not require device pairing, some use the standard to transmit anonymous messages (see bluejacking).
Applications have different implementations of the vCard standard. The Address Book on Mac OS X allows export of all contacts in one vcf file while Microsoft Outlook only accepts one contact per file. The KDE Kontact application on Linux allows import & export of single or multiple contacts per file.
[edit] Example vCard file
The following is an example of a VCard file containing information for one person:
vCard 2.1:
BEGIN:VCARD VERSION:2.1 N:Gump;Forrest FN:Forrest Gump ORG:Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. TITLE:Shrimp Man TEL;WORK;VOICE:(111) 555-1212 TEL;HOME;VOICE:(404) 555-1212 ADR;WORK:;;100 Waters Edge;Baytown;LA;30314;United States of America LABEL;WORK;ENCODING=QUOTED-PRINTABLE:100 Waters Edge=0D=0ABaytown, LA 30314=0D=0AUnited States of America ADR;HOME:;;42 Plantation St.;Baytown;LA;30314;United States of America LABEL;HOME;ENCODING=QUOTED-PRINTABLE:42 Plantation St.=0D=0ABaytown, LA 30314=0D=0AUnited States of America EMAIL;PREF;INTERNET:forrestgump@example.com REV:20080424T195243Z END:VCARD
vCard 3.0:
BEGIN:VCARD VERSION:3.0 N:Gump;Forrest FN:Forrest Gump ORG:Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. TITLE:Shrimp Man TEL;TYPE=WORK,VOICE:(111) 555-1212 TEL;TYPE=HOME,VOICE:(404) 555-1212 ADR;TYPE=WORK:;;100 Waters Edge;Baytown;LA;30314;United States of America LABEL;TYPE=WORK:100 Waters Edge\nBaytown, LA 30314\nUnited States of America ADR;TYPE=HOME:;;42 Plantation St.;Baytown;LA;30314;United States of America LABEL;TYPE=HOME:42 Plantation St.\nBaytown, LA 30314\nUnited States of America EMAIL;TYPE=PREF,INTERNET:forrestgump@example.com REV:20080424T195243Z END:VCARD
[edit] properties
vCard defines the following property types: FN, N, NICKNAME, PHOTO, BDAY, ADR, LABEL, TEL, EMAIL, MAILER, TZ, GEO, TITLE, ROLE, LOGO, AGENT, ORG, CATEGORIES, NOTE, PRODID, REV, SORT-STRING, SOUND, URL, UID, VERSION, CLASS, KEY [1].
In addition, because vCard augments RFC-2425, a standard for directory information, the following property types are also supported: SOURCE, NAME, PROFILE, BEGIN, END.
[edit] vCard extensions
vCard supports private extensions, with a "X-" prefix, a number of which are in common usage.
Some of these include:
Extension | Used As | Data | Semantic |
---|---|---|---|
extensions supported by multiple different programs | |||
X-ABUID | property | string | Apple Address Book UUID for that entry |
X-ANNIVERSARY | property | YYYY-MM-DD | arbitrary anniversary, in addition to BDAY = birthday |
X-ASSISTANT | property | string | assistant name (instead of Agent) |
X-MANAGER | property | string | manager name |
X-SPOUSE | property | string | spouse name |
X-AIM | property | string | Instant Messaging (IM) contact information; TYPE parameter as for TEL (I.e. WORK/HOME/OTHER) |
X-ICQ | property | string | " |
X-JABBER | property | string | " |
X-MSN | property | string | " |
X-YAHOO | property | string | " |
X-SKYPE-USERNAME | property | string | " |
X-GADUGADU | property | string | " |
X-GROUPWISE | property | string | " |
introduced and used by Mozilla, also used by Evolution (software) | |||
X-MOZILLA-HTML | property | TRUE/FALSE | mail recipient wants HTML email |
introduced and used by Evolution (software) | |||
X-EVOLUTION-ANNIVERSARY | property | YYYY-MM-DD | arbitrary anniversary, in addition to BDAY = birthday |
X-EVOLUTION-ASSISTANT | property | string | assistant name (instead of Agent) |
X-EVOLUTION-BLOG-URL | property | string/URL | blog URL |
X-EVOLUTION-FILE-AS | property | string | file under different name (in addition to N = name components and FN = full name |
X-EVOLUTION-MANAGER | property | string | manager name |
X-EVOLUTION-SPOUSE | property | string | spouse name |
X-EVOLUTION-VIDEO-URL | property | string/URL | video chat address |
X-EVOLUTION-CALLBACK | TEL TYPE parameter value | - | callback phone number |
X-EVOLUTION-RADIO | TEL TYPE parameter value | - | radio contact information |
X-EVOLUTION-TELEX | TEL TYPE parameter value | - | Telegraphy#Telex contact information |
X-EVOLUTION-TTYTDD | TEL TYPE parameter value | - | TTY TDD contact information |
Note: The Internet media type text/vcard was used (incorrectly) in some SyncML Documentation to refer to vCard 3.0, and the example was followed in various implementations.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- Internet mail Consortium - Personal Data Interchange
- vCard: The Electronic Business Card (Version 2.1) vCard 2.1 specification (Sept-18-1996)
- Representing vCard Objects in RDF/XML, W3C Note 22 February 2001
- hCard specification
- vCard implementations notes and bug reports
- vCard proposed errata
- RFC 2425 - A MIME Content-Type for Directory Information
- RFC 2426 - vCard MIME Directory Profile
- RFC 2739 - Calendar Attributes for vCard and LDAP
- RFC 4122 - UUID URN namespace (could be used for UID type)
- RFC 4770 - vCard Extensions for Instant Messaging
- IETF vCardDAV working group
- vCardMaker Web interface to make vCards
- vCard to LDIF/CSV Converter Web interface to convert vCards to CSV, CSV-gmail and LDIF
- CSV to vCard Web interface to convert CSV (Comma-separated values) files to vCards
- X2V hCard to vCard converter open source
- BC2 web hCard to vCard converter
- Technorati hCard to vCard conversion Contacts Feed Service
- vCardProcessor FormMail script updated to send a vCard
- xml.com vCards in xml
- CSV to vCard converter