vCard

vCard

Filename extension	.vcf, .vcard
Internet media type	text/vcard
Type code	vCrd
Uniform Type Identifier (UTI)	public.vcard
Developed by	created by Versit Consortium, all rights transferred in 1996 to Internet Mail Consortium, all rights transferred in 2004 to CalConnect
Type of format	electronic business card
Container for	contact information

vCard is a file format standard for electronic business cards. vCards are often attached to e-mail messages, but can be exchanged in other ways, such as on the World Wide Web or instant messaging. They can contain name and address information, telephone numbers, e-mail addresses, URLs, logos, photographs, and audio clips.

vCard is used as data interchange format in Personal digital assistants (PDAs), Personal information managers (PIMs) and Customer relationship management (CRMs). To accomplish these data interchange applications, other "vCard variants" have been used and proposed as "variant standards", each for its specific niche: XML representation, JSON representation or web pages.

Media type

The standard Internet media type (MIME type) for a vCard is:^[1]

text/vcard

As of version 4.0 specification, other media types known to have been used previously are now deprecated, including:^[1]

text/x-vcard

text/directory;profile=vCard

text/directory

All are oriented to "Directory Information text" (see RFC 2425). Other "vCard variants", oriented to XML and to JSON, are standard proposals (not yet a standard).

Note: The Internet media type text/vcard was used incorrectly in some SyncML documents to refer to vCard 3.0, and the example was followed in various implementations.

Example of vCard files

The following is an example of a vCard file containing information for one person:

vCard 2.1

BEGIN:VCARD
VERSION:2.1
N:Gump;Forrest;;Mr.
FN:Forrest Gump
ORG:Bubba Gump Shrimp Co.
TITLE:Shrimp Man
PHOTO;GIF:http://www.example.com/dir_photos/my_photo.gif
TEL;WORK;VOICE:(111) 555-1212
TEL;HOME;VOICE:(404) 555-1212
ADR;WORK;PREF:;;100 Waters Edge;Baytown;LA;30314;United States of America
LABEL;WORK;PREF;ENCODING=QUOTED-PRINTABLE;CHARSET=UTF-8:100 Waters Edge=0D=
 =0ABaytown\, LA 30314=0D=0AUnited States of America
ADR;HOME:;;42 Plantation St.;Baytown;LA;30314;United States of America
LABEL;HOME;ENCODING=QUOTED-PRINTABLE;CHARSET=UTF-8:42 Plantation St.=0D=0A=
 Baytown, LA 30314=0D=0AUnited States of America
EMAIL:forrestgump@example.com
REV:20080424T195243Z
END:VCARD

vCard 3.0

The most used in recent years (ref. 2016) for data interchange.

BEGIN:VCARD
VERSION:3.0
N:Gump;Forrest;;Mr.;
FN:Forrest Gump
ORG:Bubba Gump Shrimp Co.
TITLE:Shrimp Man
PHOTO;VALUE=URI;TYPE=GIF:http://www.example.com/dir_photos/my_photo.gif
TEL;TYPE=WORK,VOICE:(111) 555-1212
TEL;TYPE=HOME,VOICE:(404) 555-1212
ADR;TYPE=WORK,PREF:;;100 Waters Edge;Baytown;LA;30314;United States of Amer
 ica
LABEL;TYPE=WORK,PREF:100 Waters Edge\nBaytown\, LA 30314\nUnited States of 
 America
ADR;TYPE=HOME:;;42 Plantation St.;Baytown;LA;30314;United States of America
LABEL;TYPE=HOME:42 Plantation St.\nBaytown\, LA 30314\nUnited States of Ame
 rica
EMAIL:forrestgump@example.com
REV:2008-04-24T19:52:43Z
END:VCARD

vCard 4.0

BEGIN:VCARD
VERSION:4.0
N:Forrest;Gump;;Mr.;
FN:Forrest Gump
ORG:Bubba Gump Shrimp Co.
TITLE:Shrimp Man
PHOTO;MEDIATYPE=image/gif:http://www.example.com/dir_photos/my_photo.gif
TEL;TYPE=work,voice;VALUE=uri:tel:+1-111-555-1212
TEL;TYPE=home,voice;VALUE=uri:tel:+1-404-555-1212
ADR;TYPE=WORK,PREF:;;100 Waters Edge;Baytown;LA;30314;United States of Amer
 ica
LABEL;TYPE=WORK,PREF:100 Waters Edge\nBaytown\, LA 30314\nUnited States of 
 America
ADR;TYPE=HOME:;;42 Plantation St.;Baytown;LA;30314;United States of America
LABEL;TYPE=HOME:42 Plantation St.\nBaytown\, LA 30314\nUnited States of Ame
 rica
EMAIL:forrestgump@example.com
REV:20080424T195243Z
x-qq:21588891
END:VCARD

Example of vCard variants

xCard

It is not a standard, "vCard XML Representation" is a standard proposal of 2011, as RFC 6351.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<vcards xmlns="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:vcard-4.0">
  <vcard>
    <n>
      <surname>Forrest</surname>
      <given>Gump</given>
      <additional/>
      <prefix>Mr.</prefix>
      <suffix/>
    </n>
    <fn>
      <text>Forrest Gump</text>
    </fn>
    <org>
      <text>Bubba Gump Shrimp Co.</text>
    </org>
    <title>
      <text>Shrimp Man</text>
    </title>
    <photo>
      <parameters>
        <mediatype>
          <text>image/gif</text>
        </mediatype>
      </parameters>
      <uri>http://www.example.com/dir_photos/my_photo.gif</uri>
    </photo>
    <tel>
      <parameters>
        <type>
          <text>work</text>
          <text>voice</text>
        </type>
      </parameters>
      <uri>tel:+1-111-555-1212</uri>
    </tel>
    <tel>
      <parameters>
        <type>
          <text>home</text>
          <text>voice</text>
        </type>
      </parameters>
      <uri>tel:+1-404-555-1212</uri>
    </tel>
    <adr>
      <parameters>
        <label>
          <text>100 Waters Edge
Baytown, LA 30314
United States of America</text>
        </label>
        <type>
          <text>work</text>
        </type>
        <pref>
          <integer>1</integer>
        </pref>
      </parameters>
      <pobox/>
      <ext/>
      <street>100 Waters Edge</street>
      <locality>Baytown</locality>
      <region>LA</region>
      <code>30314</code>
      <country>United States of America</country>
    </adr>
    <adr>
      <parameters>
        <label>
          <text>42 Plantation St.
Baytown, LA 30314
United States of America</text>
        </label>
        <type>
          <text>home</text>
        </type>
      </parameters>
      <pobox/>
      <ext/>
      <street>42 Plantation St.</street>
      <locality>Baytown</locality>
      <region>LA</region>
      <code>30314</code>
      <country>United States of America</country>
    </adr>
    <email>
      <text>forrestgump@example.com</text>
    </email>
    <rev>
      <timestamp>20080424T195243Z</timestamp>
    </rev>
  </vcard>
</vcards>

jCard

jCard is not a standard, it is "The JSON Format for vCard", a standard proposal of 2014, RFC 7095. Other JSON formats (as npm's vcard-json) are in use. The RFC 7095 does not use real JSON objects, but rather uses arrays of sequence-dependent tag-value pairs (like an XML file).

["vcard",
  [
    ["version", {}, "text", "4.0"],
    ["n", {}, "text", ["Gump", "Forrest", "", "Mr.", ""]],
    ["fn", {}, "text", "Forrest Gump"],
    ["org", {}, "text", "Bubba Gump Shrimp Co."],
    ["title", {} ,"text", "Shrimp Man"],
    ["photo", {"mediatype":"image/gif"}, "uri", "http://www.example.com/dir_photos/my_photo.gif"],
    ["tel", {"type":["work", "voice"]}, "uri", "tel:+1-111-555-1212"],
    ["tel", {"type":["home", "voice"]}, "uri", "tel:+1-404-555-1212"],
    ["adr",
      {"label":"100 Waters Edge\nBaytown, LA 30314\nUnited States of America", "type":"work", "pref":"1"},
      "text",
      ["", "", "100 Waters Edge", "Baytown", "LA", "30314", "United States of America"]
    ],
    ["adr",
      {"label":"42 Plantation St.\nBaytown, LA 30314\nUnited States of America", "type":"home"},
      "text",
      ["", "", "42 Plantation St.", "Baytown", "LA", "30314", "United States of America"]
    ],
    ["email", {}, "text", "forrestgump@example.com"],
    ["rev", {}, "timestamp", "2008-04-24T19:52:43Z"]
  ]
]

Semantic content

vCard information is common in web pages: the "free text" content is human-readable but not machine-readable. As technologies evolve, the "free text" (HTML) was adapting to be also machine-readable.

• hCard is a microformat that allows a vCard to be embedded inside an HTML page. It makes use of CSS class names to identify each vCard property. Normal HTML markup and CSS styling can be used alongside the hCard class names without affecting the webpage's ability to be parsed by a hCard parser. h-card is the microformats2 update to hCard.^[2][3]

• RDFa and Microdata are similar and oriented to Semantic Web: they are replacing hCard, but losting the exact mapping to vCard. Most of vCard properties are mapped using e.g. Schema.org vocabulary (see Person and Organization classes).

Below is an example of first generation hCard.

<html>
  <head>
    <link rel="profile" href="http://microformats.org/profile/hcard" />
  </head>
  <body>
    <div class="vcard">
      <img class="photo" src="http://www.example.com/dir_photos/my_photo.gif" align="left" />
      <h1 class="fn">Forrest Gump</h1>
      <div class="email">
        Email: <a class="value" href="mailto:forrestgump@example.com">forrestgump@example.com</a>
      </div>
      <div class="n">
        Prefix: <span class="honorific-prefix">Mr.</span><br>
        First Name: <span class="given-name">Forrest</span><br>
        Last Name: <span class="family-name">Gump</span>
      </div>

      <div class="label" style="display:none">
        <span class="type">home</span>
        42 Plantation St.<br>Baytown, LA 30314<br>United States of America
      </div>
      <div class="adr">
        <span class="type">Home</span> Address:<br>
        <span class="street-address">42 Plantation St.</span><br>
        <span class="locality">Baytown</span>, <span class="region">LA</span>
        <span class="postal-code">30314</span><br>
        <span class="country-name">United States of America</span>
      </div>
      <div class="tel">
         <abbr class="type" title="voice"></abbr>
         <span class="type">Home</span> Phone: <span class="value">(111) 555-1212</span>
      </div>

      <div>
        Organization: <span class="org">Bubba Gump Shrimp Co.</span><br>
        Title: <span class="title">Shrimp Man</span>
      </div>

      <div class="label" style="display:none">
        <span class="type">work</span>
        100 Waters Edge<br>Baytown, LA 30314<br>United States of America
      </div>
      <div class="adr">
        <span class="type">Work</span> Address (<span class="type">pref</span>erred):<br>
        <span class="street-address">100 Waters Edge</span><br>
        <span class="locality">Baytown</span>, <span class="region">LA</span>
        <span class="postal-code">30314</span><br>
        <span class="country-name">United States of America</span>
      </div>
      <div class="tel">
         <abbr class="type" title="voice"></abbr>
         <span class="type">Work</span> Phone: <span class="value">(404) 555-1212</span>
      </div>

      <em>vCard last updated:</em>
      <time class="rev" datetime="2008-04-24T19:52:43Z">April 24, 2008 at 7:52 PM GMT</time>
    </div>
  </body>
</html>

Properties

vCard defines the following property types.

All vCards begin with BEGIN:VCARD and end with END:VCARD. All vCards must contain the VERSION property, which specifies the vCard version. VERSION must come immediately after BEGIN, except in the vCard 2.1 standard, which allows it to be anywhere in the vCard. Otherwise, properties can be defined in any order.

R = required

S = supported

SP = special, supported

NS = no longer supported as a property but can be used as a parameter inside another property

A handful of separate specifications define additional vCard properties.

vCard extensions

vCard supports private extensions, with an "X-" prefix, a number of which are in common usage.

Some of these include:

See also

• CardDAV
• FOAF (ontology)
• Geo URI scheme
• hCard
• MeCard

References

External links

• Internet mail Consortium - Personal Data Interchange
• vCard: The Electronic Business Card (Version 2.1) vCard 2.1 specification (Sept-18-1996)
• Representing vCard Objects in RDF - W3C ontology
• RFC 2425 — A MIME Content-Type for Directory Information
• RFC 2426 — vCard MIME Directory Profile
• RFC 2739 — Calendar Attributes for vCard and LDAP
• RFC 4122 — UUID URN namespace (could be used for UID type)
• RFC 4770 — vCard Extensions for Instant Messaging
• RFC 6350 — vCard Format Specification
• RFC 6351 — xCard: vCard XML Representation
• RFC 6473 — vCard KIND:application
• RFC 6474 — vCard Format Extensions: Place of Birth, Place and Date of Death
• RFC 6715 — vCard Format Extensions: Representing vCard Extensions Defined by the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) Converged Address Book (CAB) Group
• RFC 6868 — Parameter Value Encoding in iCalendar and vCard
• RFC 7095 — jCard: The JSON Format for vCard
• IETF vCardDAV working group
• CSV to vCard contacts file converter
• DFDL schemas for vCard