This project is dead

pyCardDAV is deprecated. See the relevant issue <https://github.com/geier/pycarddav/issues/92>. A good alternative is khard <https://github.com/scheibler/khard>.

I will still fix bugs against Davical for the foreseeable future, but don't expect anything else.

About

pyCardDAV is a simple to use CardDAV_ CLI client. It has built in support for mutt's query_command but also works very well solo (and with other MUAs).

pyCardDAV consists of pycardsyncer, a program for syncing your CardDAV resource into a local database and of pc_query, a program for querying the local database. pyCardDAV is some ugly python_ code (actually, it's not that bad anymore…) that holds together vobject_, lxml_, requests_ and pysqlite_.

.. _CardDAV: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CardDAV .. _python: http://python.org/ .. _vobject: http://vobject.skyhouseconsulting.com/ .. _lxml: http://lxml.de/ .. _pysqlite: http://code.google.com/p/pysqlite/ .. _requests: http://python-requests.org

Features

(or rather: limitations)

• pyCardDAV is only tested against davical, owncloud and sabredav
• pyCardDAV can import the sender's address directly from mutt
• pyCardDAV can backup and import to/from .vcf files
• pyCardDAV can add email addresses directly from mutt
• pyCardDAV only understands VCard 3.0
• pyCardDAV is not python 3 compatible yet

Feedback

Please do provide feedback if pyCardDAV works for you or even more importantly if it doesn't. You can reach me by email at pycarddav (at) lostpackets (dot) de , by jabber/XMPP at geier (at) jabber (dot) lostpackets (dot) de or via github_

.. _github: https://github.com/geier/pycarddav/

Installation

You can download pyCardDAV either from the above download link or check it out from git (at github). Then install pyCardDAV by executing python setup.py install. If you feel more adventurous you can always the develop branch on github, which should always be in a usable state. pyCardDAV is also available on pypi_ and can be installed via pip install pycarddav or easy_install pycarddav.

Copy and edit the supplied pycard.conf.sample file (default location is ~/.config/pycard/pycard.conf). If you don't want to store the password in clear text in the config file, pyCardDAV will ask for it while syncing.

Make sure you have sqlite3 (normally available by default), vobject, lxml(>2), requests (>0.10), urwid (>0.9) pyxdg, installed. Users of python 2.6 will also need to install argparse.

pyCardDAV has so far been successfully tested on recent versions of FreeBSD, NetBSD, Debian and Ubuntu with python 2.6 and 2.7 and against davical 0.9.9.4 - 1.0.1 (later versions should be ok, too, but 0.9.9.3 and earlier don't seem to work), owncloud and sabredav.

.. _pypi: https://pypi.python.org/pypi/pyCardDAV/ .. _git: http://github.com/geier/pycarddav/

Usage

pyCardDAV consists of three scripts, pycardsyncer which is used to sync the local database with the server, pc_query to interact with the local database and pycard-import to import email addresses from mutt.

Execute pycardsyncer to sync your addresses to the local database. You can test pc_query with::

    % pc_query searchstring

By default pyCardDAV only prints the names, email addresses and telephone numbers of contacts matching the search string, to see all vCard properties use the "-A" option.

For usage with mutt etc., pyCardDAV can also print only email addresses in a mutt friendly format (with the "-m" option). Edit your mutt configuration so that query_command uses pc_query:

Example from .muttrc::

    set query_command="/home/username/bin/pc_query -m %s"

The current version features experimental write support. If you want to test this, first make sure you have a backup of your data (but please do NOT rely on pc_query --backup for this just yet), then you can put the line::

    write_support = YesPleaseIDoHaveABackupOfMyData

in your config file (needs to be put into each Account section you want to enable write support for).

You can also import, delete or backup single cards (backup also works for the whole collection, but please don't rely on it just yet). See pc_query --help for how to use these and for some more options.

pycarddav can be configured to use different CardDAV accounts, see the example config for details. An account can be specified with -a account_name with all three utilies. If no account is chosen all searching and syncing actions will use all configured accounts, while on adding cards the first configured account will be used.

Keyring support

pycarddav supports keyring_, (version >=3.0). To use it, you need to add a password to the keyring via::

keyring set pycarddav:$account $username

where $account is the name of an account as configured in your configuration file and $username is the corresponding username (and then have no password configured for that account). For more details on configuring keyring have a look at its documentation_.

.. _keyring: https://pypi.python.org/pypi/keyring .. _documentation: https://pypi.python.org/pypi/keyring

External Password Manager Support

Pycarddav can read passwords from the standard output of another programe (e.g. a password manager). Set passwd_cmd in the configuration file (and see the example there).

Import Addresses from Mutt

You can directly add sender addresses from mutt to pyCardDAV, either adding them to existing contacts or creating a new one. If write support is enabled, they will be uploaded on the server during the next sync.

Example from .muttrc::

    macro index,pager A "<pipe-message>pycard-import<enter>" "add sender address to pycardsyncer"

SSL

If you use SSL to interact with your CardDAV Server (you probably should) and you don't have a certificate signed by a CA your OS Vendor trusts (like a self-signed certificate or one signed by CAcert) you can set verify to a path to the CA's root file (must be in pem format). If you don't want any certificate checking set verify to false to disable any ssl certificate checking (this is not recommended).

Conflict Resolution

In case of conflicting edits (local VCard changed while remote VCard also changed), are "resolved" by pycarddav through overwriting the local VCard with the remote one (meaning local edits are lost in this case). Syncing more frequently can prevent this.

Additional Information

For now, VCard properties that have no value are not shown.

Also, you should be able to use pyCardDAV's CardDAV implementation for other projects. See the CardDAV class in pycarddav/carddav.py.

In accordance with RFC 6352 all VCards that are imported or changed by pyCardDAV will automatically get a random UID (if they haven't one already), as some CardDAV servers, e.g. Owncloud require these.

Debian Wheezy Quickstart

On Debian based Linuxes this will set you up::

    apt-get install python-requests python-vobject python-pytest python-urwid python-lxml python-pyxdg
    sudo python setup.py install
    mkdir -p ~/.config/pycard
    chmod 700 ~/.config/pycard
    cp pycard.conf.sample ~/.config/pycard/pycard.conf

License

pyCardDAV is released under the Expat/MIT License:

Copyright (c) 2011-2014 Christian Geier and contributors

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.