Migrating from Kontact Contacts to Google Contacts

[RayN]

Introduction

http://www.google.com/contacts?pli=1 Google Contacts's import function will import vcf files containing vCards from Kontact but has the following problems

• Kontact sort-string gets turned into phonetic name
• Birthday gets loaded in to the notes section rather than Birthday
• x-kaddressbook-x-anniversary is not loaded
• x-kaddressbook-x-spousesname is not loaded

Solution

A solution is to use the Python vobject library to parse the file and make the following changes

• Firstly - get rid of the custom Kontact fields as vobject cannot handle them
• Google Contacts cannot load the birthday with a timezone component e.g. BDAY:1973-12-12T00:00:00Z - so remove T00:00:00Z by only including the first 10 digits
• When we find x-kaddressbook-x-anniversary make an entry ITEM<n>.X-ABDATE with a label "_$!<Anniversary>!$_"
• When we find x-kaddressbook-x-spousesname make an entry ITEM<n>.X-ABRELATEDNAMES with a label "_$!<Partner>!$_"
• When we see sort-string - just remove it

Procedure

• Pre-process the vcf file by removing custom Kontact fields with awk

awk '{if ($0 !~ /X-KADDRESSBOOK-[^X]/) {print $0}}' starting_file.vcf > intermediate.vcf

• I Had fields like: X-KADDRESSBOOK-birth_weight, X-KADDRESSBOOK-nee. You can see what you are going to remove with:

grep -e X-KADDRESSBOOK-[^X] starting_file.vcf

• Create the following python script file and make it executable

#!/usr/bin/python
import vobject, re, sys

def printSortCard(cardLines):
  # Labels have to come before the value
  for card in cardLines:
    if re.search("^ITEM.\.X-ABLABEL:_\$!<Partner>!\$_", card):
      rememberLabel = card
    else:
      print card
    if re.search("ITEM.\.X-ABRELATEDNAMES", card):
      print rememberLabel

fileName = open(sys.argv[1])
cards = vobject.readComponents(fileName)

for card in cards:
  if 'bday' in card.contents:
    card.bday.value = card.bday.value[:10]
  if 'x-kaddressbook-x-anniversary' in card.contents:
    card.add('ITEM1.X-ABDATE').value = card.x_kaddressbook_x_anniversary.value
    card.add('ITEM1.X-ABLABEL').value = "_$!<Anniversary>!$_"
  if 'x-kaddressbook-x-spousesname' in card.contents:
    card.add('ITEM2.X-ABRELATEDNAMES').value = card.x_kaddressbook_x_spousesname.value
    card.add('ITEM2.X-ABLABEL').value = "_$!<Partner>!$_"
  if 'sort-string' in card.contents:
    # Remove sort-string - phonetic name
    del card.contents[u'sort-string']
  printSortCard(card.serialize(validate=False).splitlines() )

fileName.close()

• If convert_google_vcf.py is in the current directory run

./convert_google_vcf.py intermediate.vcf > google_import.vcf

• Import the file google_import.vcf

[lmilano]

Re: Migrating from Kontact Contacts to Google Contacts

Wow Ray,

This is so amazing. The talent and predisposition to share of our community never ceases to amaze me (and warm my heart). Have you considered contributing this to KDE so it can be incorporated in a simple "Export to Google Calendar" Menu entry for Kontact?

Cheers!