VCard

Infobox file format
name = vCard
icon =
extension = .vcf, .vcard
mime = text/x-vcard
text/directory;profile=vCard
text/directory
type code = vCrd
uniform type = public.vcard
owner = Internet Mail Consortium
genre = electronic business card
container for = contact information
contained by =
extended from =
extended to =
standard =

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.

History

The vCard or Versitcard was originally proposed in 1995 by the Versit consortium, which consisted of Apple Computer, 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vCard is accompanied by a proposed standard for exchanging data about forthcoming appointments called vCalendar since superseded by iCalendar; the Internet Mail Consortium has issued a statement that it "hopes that all vCalendar developers take advantage of these new open standards and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 commonly-used filename extension for vCards is .vcf.

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 [http://suda.co.uk/projects/X2V/ X2V] and [http://businesscard2.com/index.php/create/profile BC2] , that convert such hCards into vCards, thus providing interoperability between hCards published on the web, and the aforementioned vCard clients.

An [http://www.xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0054.html 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 [http://www.w3.org/TR/vcard-rdf 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.

Example VCard file

The following is an example of a VCard file containing information for one person:

BEGIN:VCARDVERSION:2.1N:Gump;ForrestFN:Forrest GumpORG:Bubba Gump Shrimp Co.TITLE:Shrimp ManTEL;WORK;VOICE:[phone]TEL;HOME;VOICE:[phone]ADR;WORK:;;100 Waters Edge;Baytown;LA;30314;United States of AmericaLABEL;WORK;ENCODING=QUOTED-PRINTABLE:100 Waters Edge=0D=0ABaytown, LA 30314=0D=0AUnited States of AmericaADR;HOME:;;42 Plantation St.;Baytown;LA;30314;United States of AmericaLABEL;HOME;ENCODING=QUOTED-PRINTABLE:42 Plantation St.=0D=0ABaytown, LA 30314=0D=0AUnited States of AmericaEMAIL;PREF;INTERNET:[e-mail]:20080424T195243ZEND:VCARD

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 [http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2426#section-3.7.1] .

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

VCard extensions

vCard supports private extensions, with a "X-" prefix, a number of which are in common usage.

Some of these include:

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.

External links

* [http://www.imc.org/pdi/ Internet mail Consortium - Personal Data Interchange]
* [http://www.imc.org/pdi/vcard-21.txt vCard: The Electronic Business Card (Version 2.1)] vCard 2.1 specification (Sept-18-1996)
* [http://www.w3.org/TR/vcard-rdf Representing vCard Objects in RDF/XML, W3C Note 22 February 2001]
* [http://microformats.org/wiki/hcard hCard specification]
* [http://microformats.org/wiki/vcard-implementations vCard implementations notes and bug reports]
* [http://microformats.org/wiki/vcard-errata 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
* [http://vcardmaker.wackomenace.co.uk/ vCardMaker] Web interface to make vCards
* [http://labs.brotherli.ch/vcfconvert/ vCard to LDIF/CSV Converter] Web interface to convert vCards to CSV, CSV-gmail and LDIF
* [http://homepage.mac.com/phrogz/CSV2vCard_v2.html CSV to vCard] Web interface to convert CSV (Comma-separated values) files to vCards
* [http://suda.co.uk/projects/X2V/ X2V hCard to vCard converter open source]
* [http://businesscard2.com/index.php/create/profile BC2 web hCard to vCard converter]
* [http://feeds.technorati.com/contacts/ Technorati hCard to vCard conversion Contacts Feed Service]
* [http://vcardprocessor.com/ vCardProcessor] FormMail script updated to send a vCard
* [http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2004/03/31/qa.html xml.com vCards in xml]