Login

Generating vCards using VObject

Author:
pbx
Posted:
February 28, 2007
Language:
Python
Version:
Pre .96
Score:
6 (after 6 ratings)

Use this code to generate downloadable vCard objects. See the VObject docs for more details on the API.

 1
 2
 3
 4
 5
 6
 7
 8
 9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
"""
Functions for generating individual and group vCards from Django

The functions assume a "Person" object with the following fields:

  firstname
  lastname
  email
  phone
  id (automatically created by Django)

This code uses VObject: http://vobject.skyhouseconsulting.com/
"""

import vobject

def _vcard_string(person):
    """
    Helper function for vcard views. Accepts a 'person' object 
    with certain attributes (firstname, lastname, email, phone, id)
    and returns a string containing serialized vCard data.
    """
    # vobject API is a bit verbose...
    v = vobject.vCard()
    v.add('n')
    v.n.value = vobject.vcard.Name(family=person.lastname, given=person.firstname)
    v.add('fn')
    v.fn.value = "%s %s" % (person.firstname, person.lastname)
    v.add('email')
    v.email.value = person.email
    v.add('tel')
    v.tel.value = person.phone
    v.tel.type_param = 'WORK'
    v.add('url')
    v.url.value = "http://example.org/people/%s/" % person.id
    output = v.serialize()
    return output
    
def vcard(request, person_id):
    """
    View function for returning single vcard
    """
    person = Person.objects.get(pk=person_id)
    output = _vcard_string(person)
    filename = "%s%s.vcf" % (person.firstname, person.lastname)
    response = HttpResponse(output, mimetype="text/x-vCard")
    response['Content-Disposition'] = 'attachment; filename=%s' % filename
    return response

def group_vcard(request):
    """
    View function for returning group vcard
    """
    all = Person.objects.order_by('lastname', 'firstname')
    output = '\n'.join(_vcard_string(one) for one in all)
    response = HttpResponse(output, mimetype="text/x-vCard")
    response['Content-Disposition'] = 'attachment; filename=example_org_people.vcf'
    return response

More like this

  1. Template tag - list punctuation for a list of items by shapiromatron 2 months, 2 weeks ago
  2. JSONRequestMiddleware adds a .json() method to your HttpRequests by cdcarter 2 months, 3 weeks ago
  3. Serializer factory with Django Rest Framework by julio 9 months, 2 weeks ago
  4. Image compression before saving the new model / work with JPG, PNG by Schleidens 10 months, 1 week ago
  5. Help text hyperlinks by sa2812 11 months ago

Comments

shacker (on December 8, 2010):

This turns out to be a case where a "time saving" library could cost you a lot more time than it saves. It's trivial to generate vcards with standard Django templates, using an existing card as a starter template. No external lib needed. This library is a verbose black box with no benefit that I can see (well, it's good for .ics output, but not helpful for vcard output).

Not only that, but it completely falls down when you try to output multiple phone numbers into a single vcard (at least I couldn't figure it out from the snippet provided).

#

Please login first before commenting.