Forrest Gump
![]("http://example.org/media/photo.jpg")
Prefix: Mr.
First Name: Forrest
Last Name: Gump
Home Address:
42 Plantation St.
Baytown, LA
30314
United States of America
VCard
vCard, also known as VCF, 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 Multimedia Messaging Service, on the World Wide Web, instant messaging or through QR code. They can contain name and address information, telephone numbers, e-mail addresses, URLs, logos, photographs, and audio clips.
vCard Plus, an elevated vCard, makes use of a customized landing page with all the basic information along with a profile photo, maps location and other fields. This can also be saved as a contact file on smartphones.
vCard is used as data interchange format in personal digital assistants, personal information managers and customer relationship management. 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.
History
The standard Internet media type for a vCard has varied with each version of the specification:In the Versit vCard 2.1 specification, the following MIME types were specified, with the note that "the vCard has not been registered as a MIME type with the IANA.":
In 1998,
Also in 1998, the vCard 3.0 specification, RFC 2426 specified the format for vCards in directories:
In 2011 vCard 4.0, as defined in
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.
In VCF5 - Open Federated Microformating Project vCard 5.0 mime typals specification, the following MIME types were specified, with the note that "the vCard has not been registered as a MIME types
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: 555-1212
TEL;HOME;VOICE: 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
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: 555-1212
TEL;TYPE=HOME,VOICE: 555-1212
ADR;TYPE=WORK,PREF:;;100 Waters Edge;Baytown;LA;30314;United States of America
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 America
EMAIL:forrestgump@example.com
REV:2008-04-24T19:52:43Z
END:VCARD
vCard 4.0
The latest standard, which is built upon the RFC 6350 standard.BEGIN:VCARD
VERSION:4.0
N:Gump;Forrest;;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=1;LABEL="100 Waters Edge\nBaytown\, LA 30314\nUnited States of America":;;100 Waters Edge;Baytown;LA;30314;United States of America
ADR;TYPE=HOME;LABEL="42 Plantation St.\nBaytown\, LA 30314\nUnited States of America":;;42 Plantation St.;Baytown;LA;30314;United States of America
EMAIL:forrestgump@example.com
REV:20080424T195243Z
x-qq:21588891
END:VCARD
Example of vCard variants
xCard
xCard, the "vCard XML Representation" is a standard proposal of 2011, as RFC 6351. This proposal has not yet become a widely used standard.3031430314jCard
jCard, "The JSON Format for vCard" is a standard proposal of 2014, RFC 7095. This proposal has not yet become a widely used standard. Other JSON formats are in use. The RFC 7095 does not use real JSON objects, but rather uses arrays of sequence-dependent tag-value pairs.,
,
,
,
,
,
,
],
],
,
]
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" 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.
- RDFa with the can be used in HTML and various XML-family languages e.g. SVG, MathML.
- Most of vCard properties are mapped using e.g. Schema.org vocabulary.
![]("http://www.example.com/dir_photos/my_photo.gif")
Forrest Gump
Prefix: Mr.
First Name: Forrest
Last Name: Gump
Home Address:
42 Plantation St.
Baytown, LA
30314
United States of America
Home Phone: 555-1212
Organization: Bubba Gump Shrimp Co.
Title: Shrimp Man
Work Address :
100 Waters Edge
Baytown, LA
30314
United States of America
Work Phone: 555-1212
vCard last updated:
Below is an example of RDFa in HTML5 using the vCard Ontology:
Prefix: Mr.
First Name: Forrest
Last Name: Gump
Home Address:
42 Plantation St.
Baytown, LA
30314
United States of America
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.A handful of separate specifications define additional vCard properties.
| Name | Specification | Description | Example |
BIRTHPLACE | RFC 6474 | The location of the individual's birth. | BIRTHPLACE;VALUE=text:Maida Vale\, London\, England |
DEATHDATE | RFC 6474 | The individual's time of death. | DEATHDATE:19540607 |
DEATHPLACE | RFC 6474 | The location of the individual death. | DEATHPLACE;VALUE=uri:geo:53.328,-2.229409 |
EXPERTISE | RFC 6715 | A professional subject area that the person has knowledge of. | EXPERTISE;LEVEL=expert:Computer Science |
HOBBY | RFC 6715 | A recreational activity that the person actively engages in. | HOBBY;LEVEL=high:knitting |
IMPP | RFC 4770 | Defines an instant messenger handle. This was added to the official vCard specification in version 4.0. | IMPP:aim:johndoe@aol.com |
INTEREST | RFC 6715 | A recreational activity that the person is interested in, but does not necessarily take part in. | INTEREST;LEVEL=high:baseball |
ORG-DIRECTORY | RFC 6715 | A URI representing the person's work place, which can be used to look up information on the person's co-workers. | ORG-DIRECTORY: |
vCard extensions
vCard supports private extensions, with an "X-" prefix, a number of which are in common usage.Some of these include: