Perl Advent Calendar 2007-12-24

Checking the list twice

by David Westbrook

Santa has a long list of contacts to maintain every year with all those nice (and naughty!) children to deliver presents to. Text::vCard (and the companion ::Addressbook) can be used¹ to take such a list from a custom (database, CSV², elf-driven, etc) address book and create a standard (RFC 2426) addressbook, such as this mod24.vcf file for your favorite vCard-supporting application.³ One of the entries is shown below, both as the generated vCard entry and in action.

BEGIN:VCARD
N:Simpson;Bart;;;
ADR;TYPE=home:;;742 Evergreen Terrace;Springfield;;;USA
NICKNAME:Kid2
VERSION:1
TEL;TYPE=home:555-FAKE
NOTE:Really wants Bonestorm VIII
UID:SLEIGHLIST2
FN:Bart Simpson
END:VCARD

mod24.pl

   1 use Text::vCard;
   2 use Text::vCard::Addressbook;
   3 
   4 my @cols = split /,/, <DATA>; chomp @cols;
   5 my @rows = map { chomp; my %h; @h{@cols}=split /,/, $_; \%h } <DATA>;
   6 
   7 my $address_book = Text::vCard::Addressbook->new();
   8 
   9 foreach my $row ( @rows ){
  10   my $vcard = $address_book->add_vcard();
  11   $vcard->version(1);
  12   $vcard->fullname( $row->{name} );
  13   $vcard->NOTE( "Really wants a " . $row->{present} );
  14   $vcard->NICKNAME( "Kid" . $row->{id} );
  15   $vcard->UID( 'SLEIGHLIST'.$row->{id} );
  16   my $name = $vcard->add_node({node_type=>'N'});
  17   my ($given,$family) = split ' ', $row->{name};
  18   $name->family( $family );
  19   $name->given( $given );
  20   my $address = $vcard->add_node({node_type=>'ADR'});
  21   $address->add_types('home');
  22   $address->street( $row->{street} );
  23   $address->city( $row->{city} );
  24   $address->region( $row->{state} );
  25   $address->post_code( $row->{zip} );
  26   $address->country( $row->{country} );
  27   my $phone = $vcard->add_node({node_type=>'TEL'});
  28   $phone->add_types('HOME');
  29   $phone->value( $row->{phone} );
  30 }
  31 
  32 print $address_book->export();
  33 
  34 __DATA__
  35 id,name,present,street,city,state,zip,country,phone
  36 1,Ralphie Parker,Red Ryder BB,123 There St,Hammond,IN,46320,USA,219-555-0000
  37 2,Bart Simpson,slingshot,742 Evergreen Terrace,Springfield,ST,0000,USA,555-FAKE
  38 3,Donald Gardner,two front teeth,1944 School St,Smithtown,NY,11745,USA,631-555-0000

1. Took some trial and error along with this Howto create vCards with perl article by Michael Frankl for a phone number example.

2. In this example we use (lines 4-5) a (bare-bones) hand-rolled CSV reader. For any actual use, Text::CSV, DBD::CSV, DBD::AnyData, or the like can (should) be used instead for robustness.

3. Screenshot is from vCardOrganizer 1.2.5 (neutral usage -- just selected from search results).