Rediscovering CardDAV, Hacker News

I can no longer sync iOS ’Contacts with my macOS Catalina’s Finder; the OS insists I’ve iCloud configured for Contacts which I do not. I’ve gone through all the steps Apple recommends, done the upgrades and the reboots, but there’s nothing doing. All the swearing and threatening of moving to a different operating system aren’t really helping. This started sometime after I wrote about setting up macOS to “dial” a number using a shell script , but it cannot be related.

I was spilling my sorrows on Christoph who simply said he avoids all those issues by using CardDAV . I slapped my forehead: I’ve been using CalDAV for years, for synchronizing two calendars across devices: my own calendar across two Macs, an iPad , and an iPhone, and the family calendar across the family’s devices. How could I have forgotten about CardDAV ?

Baïkal has served us well for many years (the modification timestamp on the configuration reads August 2019. Before looking at using it for CardDAV I thought I’d put it on my little FreeBSD system in a BastilleBSD jail. The calendar migration was easy enough but produced a liter or two of adrenalin when I watched one calendar after the other disappear from iCal. Anyway, I got the data imported and our small family was back in sync.

I then created a Baïkal address book for myself, set up macOS and an iPhone to use that, and created a pseudo person’s entry on the Mac and another on iOS, and experimented a bit with how long it takes either side to sync, etc. As soon as I was satisfied I copy / pasted all contacts from macOS ’internal address book to its CardDAV store. When my contacts showed up on the iPhone, I knew I was half in business. After an additional backup I cleared out all the local contacts on the Mac.

Android

I recently had to purchase a new old phone for testing OwnTracks on Android and settled for a used Samsung Galaxy S8, a device which vastly exceeded my expectations. A really nice piece of kit, if only it weren’t for Android … #halfkidding

I went the whole hog and decided to see how well I could work with the S8 and purchased a copy of DAVx5 which is a really good and well thought-out bit of software. There’s an Open Source but I decided to pay for the software – developers must live off something other than applause and fresh air.

I can create, edit, and delete contacts on the S8 and DAVx5 will synchronize them back via CardDAV to my server. Just the way it ought to be.

CLI FreeBSD / Linux

I mostly use

Mutt as an email client which means I want to be able to integrate whichever solution I come up with with these tools. A quick search led me to install vdirsyncer which enables me to synchronize my CardDAV server with a local directory of VCard files on the file system. If I change any of these files the utility can then synchronize the changes back to the server. (Source code: vdirsyncer .) The program’s configuration file reminds me of OfflineIMAP’s and its operating principles are similar: I configure a local and a remote store which are kept in sync.

   (export  (REQUESTS_CA_BUNDLE)  =mensCA.crt  $   vdirsyncer discover  $  vdirsyncer  sync        Now that I have a set of VCard files in a directory, I can use

khard , an address book for the Unix command line, which reads, creates, and modifies these files, and which can also be (integrated with other programs , suitable for my use with Mutt .

  khard new ..  $   khard edit ..    ($)  vdirsyncer  - v  WARNING  sync   $   khard list jolie  Address book: jpm-ab Index Name Phone Email 1 Jolie, Jane work, pref:    work, pref: [email protected]    ($)  khard show jolie  Name: Jane Jolie Full name: Jane Jolie Address book: jpm-ab General:     Birthday: 2020 - 12 - 23     Nickname: jj Phone     work, pref:    E-Mail     work, pref: [email protected] Private:     OwnTracks: owntracks / jjolie / s8 Miscellaneous     UID: 6302547 cfe6 -  (f - (d3-aabf-b3bab)      Webpage:    - _ $  !    ($ _) : jj.example.org  Note: Actress    
 Khard is just an example; Any program able to read or manipulate VCard files would be suitable. 
   Thunderbird    

 Thunderbird isn't a client I use, but if I moved to  FreeBSD  or one of its desktop siblings, I likely would (in addition to Mutt), so I thought I'd do you the favor and see how well it supports CardDAV. It doesn't really, because it lacks built-in support for  CardDAV , but I found  TBsync 
 which, with  Dav-4-TbSync 
, allow me to synchronize my CardDAV and CalDAV stores to it. I tested this on  FreeBSD , and it seems to work well enough at a first glance.   
 I can edit address book entries on Thunderbird and thanks to a builtin scheduler can automatically (or on-demand) synchronize changes back to the server.  TbSync is open source 
 and there's a short 
 getting started 
 page.   

	
			
	
			
		
	
		




 The Coronavirus isolation and my speaking more with friends inspired this blog post. Thank you, Christoph, for the heads up. 
                      
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