perlmeditation
jgamble
<p>I had a emergency call to transfer address book contents from a client's old system to Microsoft Outlook. At first this seemed simple. The old system exported its contents in a well-formed VCF file, each <a href='http://www.silicon-press.com/briefs/brief.vcard/'>vCard</a> separated by a double newline. But Outlook assumes that each VCF file holds only one <a href='http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VCard'>vCard</a>, and imports only the first entry, skipping the rest.</p>
<p>That's simple (I thought). Set $/ to "\n\n", slurp in the file to an array variable, and write out each record as an individual file in a subdirectory for each user.</p>
<p>Oops. Not so simple. Outlook doesn't do batch reads of VCF files. Someone would have to click on over a thousand VCF files to enter them into Outlook, and since that someone would be me it was vitally important to come up with a different solution.</p>
<readmore>
<p>A search through Google showed this to be a problem that almost no one had bothered to solve. But I had written an <a href='http://www.perlmonks.org/?node_id=128957'>Outlook e-mail</a> subroutine once, and thought it could be modified to handle contact items instead of mail items.</p>
<p>Here's the outer loop around the new subroutine. At this point the records have been slurped into the array @vrecs. I ignored groups, which were done in an idiosyncratic way in the old system. Some vcard items cross multiple lines, so I temporarily join them. Then I split the entries by newlines, and created a hash to feed to outlook_vcard().</p>
<code>
#
# Create a contact for each record.
#
foreach my $vcf (@vrecs)
{
my %track;
unless ($vcf =~ /^X-GWTYPE:GROUP(END)?/) # Skip group records.
{
chomp $vcf; # $/ is still "\n\n".
$vcf =~ s/=0A=\n/=0A= /g;
my @lines = split(/\n/, $vcf);
foreach my $line (@lines)
{
my @parts = split(/:/, $line);
$parts[1] =~ s/=0A= /\n/g;
$track{$parts[0]} = $parts[1];
}
}
outlook_vcard(%track);
}
</code>
<p>Since the outlook_vcard function was written to handle a specific problem, not all possible VFC entries are dealt with. For example, a quick search of the client's files showed that only one e-mail address per entry was present, so I didn't have to worry about dealing with multiple e-mail addresses, something that wouldn't be true in a more generic application.</p>
<code>
sub outlook_vcard
{
my(%vcard_props) = @_;
my $mail = new Win32::OLE('Outlook.Application');
my $item = $mail->CreateItem(2); # 2 = contact item.
unless ($item)
{
warn "Outlook is not running, cannot save vCard.\n";
return 0;
}
$item->{FullName} = $vcard_props{'FN'} || $vcard_props{'N'} || ' ';
$item->{Company} = $vcard_props{'ORG'} || ' ';
$item->{Email1Address} = $vcard_props{'EMAIL;WORK;PREF'} ||
$vcard_props{'EMAIL;WORK;PREF;NGW'} || ' ';
$item->{HomeAddress} = $vcard_props{'ADR;DOM;HOME;PARCEL;POSTAL'} ||
$vcard_props{'LABEL;DOM;HOME;PARCEL;POSTAL;ENCODING=QUOTED-PRINTABLE'} || ' ';
$item->{BusinessAddress} = $vcard_props{'ADR;DOM;WORK;PARCEL;POSTAL'} ||
$vcard_props{'LABEL;DOM;WORK;PARCEL;POSTAL;ENCODING=QUOTED-PRINTABLE'} || ' ';
$item->{OtherAddress} = $vcard_props{'ADR;INTL;WORK;PARCEL;POSTAL'} ||
$vcard_props{'LABEL;INTL;WORK;PARCEL;POSTAL;ENCODING=QUOTED-PRINTABLE'} || ' ';
$item->{BusinessTelephoneNumber} = $vcard_props{'TEL;WORK'} || ' ';
$item->{MobileTelephoneNumber} = $vcard_props{'TEL;CELL'} || ' ';
$item->{HomeTelephoneNumber} = $vcard_props{'TEL;HOME'} || ' ';
$item->{PrimaryTelephoneNumber} = $vcard_props{'TEL;PREF'} || ' ';
$item->{BusinessFaxNumber} = $vcard_props{'TEL;PREF;FAX'} || ' ';
$item->{Title} = $vcard_props{'TITLE'} || ' ';
$item->{Body} = $vcard_props{'NOTE'} ||
$vcard_props{'NOTE;QUOTED-PRINTABLE'} || ' ';
$item->Save();
return 1;
}
</code>
</readmore>
<hr>
<p>
<ol><li><a href='http://www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter/resources/officetips/apr05/tips0426.mspx'>Create a contact in Outlook using VB</a>.</li>
<li><a href='http://www.dicks-clicks.com/excel/olContacts.htm#Create_a_Contact'>Another article on the same subject</a>.</li>
<li><a href='http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa210907(office.11).aspx'>The properties of ContactItem</a>.</li>
</ol></p>