vpim

a clone of the vpim project on rubyforge (patched geolocation support)

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Ruby

Author:: Sam Roberts [email protected]
Copyright:: Copyright © 2008 Sam Roberts
License:: May be distributed under the same terms as Ruby
Homepage:: http://vpim.rubyforge.org
Download:: http://rubyforge.org/projects/vpim
Install:: sudo gem install vpim

vPim provides calendaring, scheduling, and contact support for Ruby through the
standard iCalendar and vCard data formats for “personal information” exchange.

= Thanks

= Installation

There is a vPim package installable using ruby-gems:

sudo gem install vpim (may require root privilege)

It is also installable in the standard way. Untar the package, and do:

$ ruby setup.rb --help

or do:

$ ruby setup.rb config
$ ruby setup.rb setup

ruby setup.rb install (may require root privilege)

= Overview

vCard (RFC 2426) is a format for personal information, see Vpim::Vcard and
Vpim::Maker::Vcard.

iCalendar (RFC 2445) is a format for calendar related information, see
Vpim::Icalendar.

vCard and iCalendar support is built on top of an implementation of the MIME
Content-Type for Directory Information (RFC 2425). The basic RFC 2425 format is
implemented by Vpim::DirectoryInfo and Vpim::DirectoryInfo::Field.

The libary is quite useful, but improvements are ongoing. If you find
something missing or have suggestions, please contact me. I can’t promise
instantaneous turnaround, but I might be able to suggest another approach, and
features requested by users of vPim go to the top of the todo list. If you need
a feature for a commercial project, consider sponsoring development.

= Examples

Here’s an example to give a sense for how iCalendars are encoded and decoded:

require ‘vpim/icalendar’

cal = Vpim::Icalendar.create2

cal.add_event do |e|
e.dtstart Date.new(2005, 04, 28)
e.dtend Date.new(2005, 04, 29)
e.summary “Monthly meet-the-CEO day”
e.description <<‘—’
Unlike last one, this meeting will change your life because
we are going to discuss your likely demotion if your work isn’t
done soon.

e.categories    [ 'APPOINTMENT' ]
e.categories do |c| c.push 'EDUCATION' end
e.url           'http://www.example.com'
e.sequence      0
e.access_class  "PRIVATE"
e.transparency  'OPAQUE'

now = Time.now
e.created       now
e.lastmod       now


e.organizer do |o|
  o.cn = "Example Organizer, Mr."
  o.uri = "mailto:[email protected]"
end

attendee = Vpim::Icalendar::Address.create("mailto:[email protected]")
attendee.rsvp = true
e.add_attendee attendee

end

icsfile = cal.encode

puts ‘— Encode:’

puts icsfile

puts ‘— Decode:’

cal = Vpim::Icalendar.decode(icsfile).first

cal.components do |e|
puts e.summary
puts e.description
puts e.dtstart.to_s
puts e.dtend.to_s
end

This produces:

— Encode:
BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
PRODID:-//Ensemble Independent//vPim 0.357//EN
CALSCALE:Gregorian
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20050428
DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20050429
SUMMARY:Monthly meet-the-CEO day
DESCRIPTION:Unlike last one, this meeting will change your life because\nwe
are going to discuss your likely demotion if your work isn’t\ndone soon.\n
CATEGORIES:APPOINTMENT,EDUCATION
URL:http://www.example.com
SEQUENCE:0
CLASS:PRIVATE
CREATED:20060402T231755
LAST-MODIFIED:20060402T231755
ORGANIZER;CN="Example Organizer, Mr.":mailto:[email protected]
ATTENDEE;RSVP=true:mailto:[email protected]
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR
— Decode:
Monthly meet-the-CEO day
Unlike last one, this meeting will change your life because
we are going to discuss your likely demotion if your work isn’t
done soon.
Thu Apr 28 00:00:00 UTC 2005
Fri Apr 29 00:00:00 UTC 2005

More examples of using vPim are provided in samples/.

vCard examples are:

  • link:ex_mkvcard.txt: example of creating a vCard
  • link:ex_cpvcard.txt: example of copying and them modifying a vCard
  • link:ex_mkv21vcard.txt: example of creating version 2.1 vCard
  • link:mutt-aliases-to-vcf.txt: convert a mutt aliases file to vCards
  • link:ex_get_vcard_photo.txt: pull photo data from a vCard
  • link:ab-query.txt: query the OS X Address Book to find vCards
  • link:vcf-to-mutt.txt: query vCards for matches, output in formats useful
    with Mutt (see link:README.mutt for details)
  • link:tabbed-file-to-vcf.txt: convert a tab-delimited file to vCards, a
    (small but) complete application contributed by Dane G. Avilla, thanks!
  • link:vcf-to-ics.txt: example of how to create calendars of birthdays from vCards
  • link:vcf-dump.txt: utility for dumping contents of .vcf files

iCalendar examples are:

  • link:ics-to-rss.txt: prints todos as RSS, or starts a WEBrick servlet
    that publishes todos as a RSS feed. Thanks to Dave Thomas for this idea,
    from http://pragprog.com/pragdave/Tech/Blog/ToDos.rdoc.
  • link:cmd-itip.txt: prints emailed iCalendar invitations in human-readable
    form, and see link:README.mutt for instruction on mutt integration. I get
    a lot of meeting invitations from Lotus Notes/Domino users at work, and
    this is pretty useful in figuring out where and when I am supposed to be.
  • link:reminder.txt: prints upcoming events and todos, by default from
    Apple’s iCal calendars
  • link:rrule.txt: utility for printing recurrence rules
  • link:ics-dump.txt: utility for dumping contents of .ics files

= Project Information

vPim can be downloaded from the Ruby Forge project page:

or installed as a gem:

  • sudo gem install vpim

For notifications about new releases, or to ask questions about vPim, please
subscribe to “vpim-talk”: