iAddressBook Shares Email vCard Records On A LAMP (PHP) Web Server

iAddressBook shares email vCard records on a LAMP (PHP) web server. You don't need to know PHP, but you should know basic MySQL. See the demo, HERE.

iAddressBook only imports vCards, but exports:

- vCard (Evolution) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VCard
- CSV (OpenOffice Calc) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comma-separated_values
- LDIF (Mozilla Thunderbird) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LDIF

INSTALL

Either choose sqlite, or create an empty database. The README.txt file explains how to edit the conf/config.php file. Extract the code from http://iaddressbook.org/ to your web directory, and run it, by opening its root directory in your browser.

If you use Mozilla Thunderbird, you should export your address book to LDIF. You can then use Gnome Evolution to convert LDIF to vCard format, which iAddressBook can import. Some data cleanup will be necessary.

TIPS AND TRICKS

iAddressBook allows for typical authorization. However, I like to use it for a Wiki-styled intranet.

I've not gotten a response from the author, and I've not seen activity, since v1.0 was released 1.5 years ago. That said, iAddressBook is stable, complete, and avoids bloat with clean code. I posted a bug fix for handling birthdays at the end of the year, and Thunderbird LDIF import at http://iaddressbook.org/wiki/bugs

If you don't have a camera handy, MeMaker (Ubuntu, Fedora and source code available) easily creates avatars of your friends or co-workers.

This is a guest post from Bruce, a New York City programmer, the author of http://emacro.sf.net/. Also see "Searching For Text? `egrep -r foo $*` Too Slow?", another great post by Bruce.