vCard

China Product


History

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vCard is accompanied by a proposed standard for exchanging data about forthcoming appointments called vCalendar, since superseded by iCalendar; the Internet Mail Consortium has issued a statement that it "hopes that all vCalendar developers take advantage of these new open standards and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. In RFC 4770, vCard Extensions for Instant Messaging, a new type of entry to hold an IMPP URI is defined, which is "IMPP".

Derivatives and Applications norstar business phone system

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. terrestrial digital receiver

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). digital terrestrial receiver

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 application in Mac OS X and the KDE Kontact application accept any number of contacts in a single vCard file and allow export of any set of contacts, or all contacts, in one vCard file, while Microsoft Outlook only accepts one contact per file.

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:kapukod;Htszin

FN:4758

ORG:Bubba Gump Shrimp Co.

TITLE:Shrimp Man

TEL;CELL;VOICE:2536

X-IRMC_LUID 0002000002A7

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

Baytown, LA 30314

United States of America

ADR;TYPE=HOME:;;42 Plantation St.;Baytown;LA;30314;United States of America

LABEL;TYPE=HOME:42 Plantation St.

Baytown, LA 30314

United States of America

EMAIL;TYPE=PREF,INTERNET:forrestgump@example.com

REV:20080424T195243Z

END:VCARD

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 .

Name

Description

Semantic

N

Name

a structured representation of the name of the person, place or thing associated with the vCard object.

FN

Formatted Name

the formatted name string associated with the vCard object

PHOTO

Photograph

an image or photograph of the individual associated with the vCard

BDAY

Birthday

date of birth of the individual associated with the vCard

ADR

Delivery Address

a structured representation of the physical delivery address for the vCard object

LABEL

Label Address

addressing label for physical delivery to the person/object associated with the vCard

TEL

Telephone

the canonical number string for a telephone number for telephony communication with the vCard object

EMAIL

Email

the address for electronic mail communication with the vCard object

MAILER

Email Program (Optional)

Type of email program used

TZ

Time Zone

information related to the standard time zone of the vCard object

GEO

Global Positioning

The property specifies a latitude and longitude

TITLE

Title

specifies the job title, functional position or function of the individual associated with the vCard object within an organization (V. P. Research and Development)

ROLE

Role or occupation

the role, occupation, or business category of the vCard object within an organization (eg. Executive)

LOGO

Logo

an image or graphic of the logo of the organization that is associated with the individual to which the vCard belongs

AGENT

Agent

information about another person who will act on behalf of the vCard object. Typically this would be an area administrator, assistant, or secretary for the individual

ORG

Organization Name or Organizational unit

the name and optionally the unit(s) of the organization associated with the vCard object. This property is based on the X.520 Organization Name attribute and the X.520 Organization Unit attribute

NOTE

Note

specifies supplemental information or a comment that is associated with the vCard

REV

Last Revision

combination of the calendar date and time of day of the last update to the vCard object

SOUND

Sound

By default, if this property is not grouped with other properties it specifies the pronunciation of the Formatted Name property of the vCard object.

URL

URL

An URL is a representation of an Internet location that can be used to obtain real-time information about the vCard object

UID

Unique Identifier

specifies a value that represents a persistent, globally unique identifier associated with the object

VERSION

Version

Version of the vCard Specification

KEY

Public Key

the public encryption key associated with the vCard object

In addition, because vCard augments RFC-2425, a standard for directory information, the following property types are also supported: SOURCE, NAME, PROFILE, BEGIN, END.

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-GENDER

property

string

value "Male" or "Female"

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, X-SKYPE-USERNAME

property

string

"

X-GADUGADU

property

string

"

X-GROUPWISE

property

string

"

X-MS-IMADDRESS

property

string

" (IM address in VCF attachment from Outlook (right click Contact, Send Full Contact, Internet Format.)

X-MS-CARDPICTURE

property

string

Works as PHOTO or LOGO. Contains an image of the Card in Outlook.

X-PHONETIC-FIRST-NAME, X-PHONETIC-LAST-NAME

property

string

alternative spelling of name, used for Japanese names by Android and iPhone

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

-

Telex contact information

X-EVOLUTION-TTYTDD

TEL TYPE parameter value

-

TTY TDD contact information

introduced and used by Kontact and KAddressBook

X-KADDRESSBOOK-BlogFeed

property

string/URL

blog URL

X-KADDRESSBOOK-X-Anniversary

property

ISO date

arbitrary anniversary, in addition to BDAY = birthday

X-KADDRESSBOOK-X-AssistantsName

property

string

assistant name (instead of Agent)

X-KADDRESSBOOK-X-IMAddress

property

string

im address

X-KADDRESSBOOK-X-ManagersName

property

string

manager name

X-KADDRESSBOOK-X-Office

property

string

office description

X-KADDRESSBOOK-X-Profession

property

string

profession

X-KADDRESSBOOK-X-SpouseName

property

string

spouse name

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.

See also

hCard

Internet Business Cards

FOAF

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

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