hpr1313 :: How I Manage Contacts
Strategies for de-duplicating and centralising contact information
Hosted by Jon Kulp on 2013-08-14 is flagged as Clean and is released under a CC-BY-SA license.
LDIF, vCard, OwnCloud, CardDAV, Thunderbird.
1.
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general.
How I Manage Contacts
About a year ago I decided to try to clean up my contacts.
The problem: CRUFT!
- Importing, exporting re-importing in different accounts and in different email clients and several computers etc over span of ~10 years.
- 1200+ gmail contacts
- Many duplicates
What I wanted:
- 1 set of contacts across platforms with single source file from which all others are generated
- plain-text format, easy to use w/scripting & text editor
- No duplicates
- no cruft
- easy to maintain
- easy to import/export in T-bird, ownCloud
- sync with phone
Steps to Success:
- Turn off Gmail default setting that saves every incoming email address in your address book
- Deleted all extraneous contacts (went from ~1200 down to about 400)
- Tedious part here: compare duplicates, consolidate info
- Decide on source-file format
- T-bird = LDIF
- OwnCloud = vCard
- LDIF wins b/c found script to convert to vCard, but not good script for other direction
- Convert all disparate contacts lists to LDIF, begin consolidating into one file
- LDIF ready? Import to T-bird
- Perl script to convert LDIF to vCard –> import to ownCloud
- CardDAV-sync to sync from o.c. to phone
- Bash script to create new LDIF entries, convert to vcf, add to master file easily
Wishlist
- Make t-bird sync w/owncloud (t-bird SOGO extension broken)
- CLI API to update owncloud contacts via a script instead of having to use the web interface
Links
- CardDAV-sync android app https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.dmfs.carddav.sync&hl=en
- OwnCloud https://owncloud.org/
- Thunderbird Addon: Duplicate Contact Manager https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/thunderbird/addon/duplicate-contact-manager/
- Original ldif2vcf perl script https://www.barninger.com/ldif_to_vcard/
- My modified version: https://paste.jonkulp.net/view/d47bbeca
- My ldif creator bash script https://paste.jonkulp.net/view/32922107