Export Contacts to vCards

[loregood]

I'm looking at creating an Export Template of Contact information to a vCard file for easy import into many different cross-platform Contact applications.

I'm no expert in vCards, but I have looked at the "vCard Format Specification" described in RFC-6350.

I think that 2 changes could improve export (and import) to and from vCards significantly.

1. A "uuid": field for tenancy/contacts in the URN namespace defined in RFC4122 created (with a unique UID) upon creation. Used for the UID field described in section-6.7.6 to uniquely identify a vCard.

    "uuid": "03a0e51f-d1aa-4385-8a53-e29025acd8af",

2. A more structured output for the "address": field (like a JSON object) for all the components describing an address. Used for the ADR field described in section-6.3.1. The values can be empty.

    "address": {
        "po_box": "the post office box",
        "ext_addr": "the extended address (e.g., apartment or suite number)",
        "street": "the street address",
        "city": "the locality (e.g., city)",
        "region": "the region (e.g., state or province)",
        "postal": "the postal code",
        "country": "the country name"
    },

A simple Export Template of all Contacts (Content Type: tenancy | contact,
MIME Type: text/vcard, File Extension: vcf as an Attachment) tested on NetBox v3.2.9:

{# RFC-6350 vCard export of all Contacts to a single .vcf file -#}
{# Export to VERSION:3.0 (better supported when importing) -#}
{%  for contact in queryset %}
BEGIN:VCARD
VERSION:3.0
KIND:individual
N:;;;;
FN;CHARSET=UTF-8:{{ contact.name }}
{%      if contact.title -%}
TITLE;CHARSET=UTF-8:{{ contact.title }}
{%      endif -%}
{%      if contact.phone -%}
TEL;type=WORK;type=VOICE:{{ contact.phone }}
{%      endif -%}
{%      if contact.cf.mobile -%}
TEL;type=CELL;type=VOICE:{{ contact.cf.mobile }}
{%      endif -%}
{%      if contact.email -%}
EMAIL;type=INTERNET;type=WORK;CHARSET=UTF-8:{{ contact.email }}
{%      endif -%}
{%      if contact.address -%}
{%          set ESC_COMMA = contact['address'] | replace(",", "\,") -%}
{%          set ESC_DASH = ESC_COMMA | replace("-", "\-") -%}
{%          set ESC_NEWLINE = ESC_DASH | replace("\r\n", ";") -%}
ADR;type=WORK;CHARSET=UTF-8:;;{{ ESC_NEWLINE }}
{%      endif -%}
END:VCARD
{%  endfor %}

With the "address": field currently formatet like this:

"address": "First Line\r\nSecond Line\r\nMaybe more lines..?",

It's really hard (guessing required) to create a parser in Jinja that correctly handles how a user might type in an address. It doesn't get easier when you have addresses in multiple countries (with different formats). The ADR must have them is the format below (all the fields separated with ;) and in that order:

{# ADR RFC: "PO_BOX;EXT_ADDR;STREET;CITY;REGION;POSTAL;COUNTRY" -#}

Some countries don't use REGION and POSTAL might be written before CITY. If a field is empty you still need the ; separator. So a line might look something like: ;;STREET;CITY;;POSTAL;

For better support with multiple different Contact applications you generally want to keep PO_BOX and EXT_ADDR empty - so your ADR line should probably start with ADR:;;

I'm not sure how much work the changes above would require and wondered if anybody else would see any value in better support for vCard import and export of Contacts to and from NetBox?

[candlerb]

As a first step, or a prototype/proof-of-concept, you could add Custom Fields to Tenancy > Contact, containing the uuid and the structured address fields.