[APP]ContactSync sync contact information on Android/Blackberry

[920904]

ContactSync is an Android (also works on Blackberry) app which allows you to sync your Android contacts with local files and FTP, HTTP, WebDAV or CardDAV servers.

Do you want to check out the app? Then just load and install the free test version where you can check out all the feature for free at the Google Play Store, Blackberry World, Amazon Store or directly from my website (link below).

Features:

• Using a self-created analyser which supports complex and more features than other contact sync applications.
• Supporting vCards in all availbale versions (4.0, 3.0 and 2.1)
• Supporting much more android contact fields then other apps (IMPORT and EXPORT).
• Contact photos can also be automatically be loaded from the web!
• Automatically create appointments for birthdays and anniversaries so that you won't miss them!
• Importing contacts stored on the android device (.vcf).
• Importing multiple files at once
• Fingerfriedly user interface.
• Supporting different ways of handling double contacts:Ignoring, Replacing, Merging
• Supporting groups (native groups in vCard 4.0 and mapping of categories in vCard 3.0 and 2.1)
• Sync statistics
• Automatic background sync
• Supporting network sources for contact information.
• Supporting HTTP/HTTPS (syncing from and to a server (two way sync))
• Supporting FTP/FTPS (syncing from and to a server (two way sync))
• Supporting WebDAV/WebDAVs (syncing from and to a server (two way sync))
  [*]Supporting CardDAV (syncing from and to a server (two way sync))
• Supporting (also two way) sync to local files stored on your device
• Supporting self signed certificates
• Multi-language: Currently english
• If you are interested in translating the app in other languages please contact me.

The app handles more contact/group data then other apps e.g.:
address, birthdays, anniversaries, custom events, categories, groups, notes, email, instant messages, name, nickname, organizations, photos (also high res), relations, phonetic names, websites, roles, titles, Apple specific extensions, Mime dir groups, Android specific extensions, self defined custom labels

The app has been sucessfully tested with more then 30 different CardDAV Servers like Apple iCloud or Owncloud. You can find a list here:Sucessfully tested CardDAV Server

Requirements:
Android 2.2 or newer.

Permissions
android.permission.READ_CONTACTS and android.permission.WRITE_CONTACTS
The app is designed to interact with the contacts on the device so it needs the rigths access the contacts.
android.permission.WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE and android.permission.READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE
Used to create files on the device e.g. to backup contacts in .vcf files and to read files storing contacts.
android.permission.INTERNET and android.permission.ACCESS_NETWORK_STATE
Used to access contact information available at server connected by a network like the Internet.
android.permission.READ_PHONE_STATE
For licensing the app needs access to device id.
com.android.vending.CHECK_LICENSE
Needed for google licensing mechanism.
android.permission.RECEIVE_BOOT_COMPLETED and android.permission.ACCESS_WIFI_STATE
For the automatic background sync feature.
android.permission.WAKE_LOCK
For the automatic background sync and to prevent the device to go in sleep mode during operations.
android.permission.MANAGE_ACCOUNTS and android.permission.AUTHENTICATE_ACCOUNTS and android.permission.USE_CREDENTIALS and android.permission.READ_SYNC_SETTINGS and android.permission.WRITE_SYNC_SETTINGS
Used to create and manage android sync accounts to integrate the app in the default contact handling apps.
android.permission.READ_CALENDAR and android.permission.WRITE_CALENDAR
The app has a feature which can be used to automatically create appointments for birthdays and anniversaries at a choosebale calendar so that you wont miss such an event.

If you like my app please donate so that i can develop further improvements.
Download (NO MIRRORING): Contact Sync click here

 

[HLFH]

When for an Open Source version ?

Hi,

You say that this app will be FOSS with the 1.0 version. So, concretely when ??

Thanks :crying:

 

[920904]

Hi,

You say that this app will be FOSS with the 1.0 version. So, concretely when ??

Thanks :crying:

I'm sorry but I think you mean a different app and developer.

 

[androidfan34]

just installed it and was disappointed. the post said nothing about money...

and your webpage you dont say how much it is...only to contact you directly

i have a place for software like this, its called /dev/null

 

[920904]

just installed it and was disappointed. the post said nothing about money...

and your webpage you dont say how much it is...only to contact you directly

i have a place for software like this, its called /dev/null

If you just want to buy the app then you can easily click the play store link. But if you want to test the app or buy it directly from me then you will have to communicate with me in any way (to find a purchase option which fits your need, informations how to get a (of course free and NOT limited) testlicense, and so on).

 

[binser]

I am looking for an app that can help me to import my Palm contacts from my pc, which I can export as vcf.

Can your app handle that?

 

[920904]

I am looking for an app that can help me to import my Palm contacts from my pc, which I can export as vcf.

Can your app handle that?

Basically the app can handle vcf files really well , but in your case I can give you some additoanl details because I had already some users with used my app to transfer palm .vcf contacts and gave me a very good feedback, so yes this can be done with the app.

 

[donny02]

Birthday Calendar

Hi,

I discovered this app when I was looking for a way to sync my android contacts with my homeserver running radicale.
The app was easy to set up and works quit good, so I decided to buy the paid version for small money

I like the option to put all birthdays and anniversaries from contacts to a calendar and used this option too.
I have three minor things to note in this calendar scenario:
1. anniversaries are not processed, when a server addressbook is newly synced to the pone. It works only, wenn contacts are entered on the phone. I would like an option to generate calendar entries when getting contacts from server. Or perhaps just an option to create calendar entries from already existing contacts so I can create an new calendar even if contact are already on the phone.
2. I have wedding days in my contacts which are called "Hochzeitstag". Here the app generates some strange calender entries with "... name not found ...". Maybe you can fix this.
3. The age of a person in a calendar entry is just in the description, not in the title. Since my calendar widget just shows the title of an entry I would appreciate an option to generate the age to calendar title too.

But I must say, that sync functionality is just great. With little improvements for calendar integration it will be phenomenal!

donny

 

[920904]

Hi,

I discovered this app when I was looking for a way to sync my android contacts with my homeserver running radicale.
The app was easy to set up and works quit good, so I decided to buy the paid version for small money

I like the option to put all birthdays and anniversaries from contacts to a calendar and used this option too.
I have three minor things to note in this calendar scenario:
1. anniversaries are not processed, when a server addressbook is newly synced to the pone. It works only, wenn contacts are entered on the phone. I would like an option to generate calendar entries when getting contacts from server. Or perhaps just an option to create calendar entries from already existing contacts so I can create an new calendar even if contact are already on the phone.
2. I have wedding days in my contacts which are called "Hochzeitstag". Here the app generates some strange calender entries with "... name not found ...". Maybe you can fix this.
3. The age of a person in a calendar entry is just in the description, not in the title. Since my calendar widget just shows the title of an entry I would appreciate an option to generate the age to calendar title too.

But I must say, that sync functionality is just great. With little improvements for calendar integration it will be phenomenal!

donny

Hi Donny,

thank you for your feedback.
1) Currently there are only appointments generated for contacts synced from the server to the device because those run through the full sync process. So I assume that you want to get the other way?

2)The app uses the FullName vcard field for the displayed name. This sounds (when the tag "name not defined") is displayed that the FullName (FN element) is missing at the contact. This violates the vCard Standard because it has to be present at each vcard at least once. Do you know which system has generated the vcard, you could file in a bug report?
But I think I can add a fallback for structure name and nickname definition in this case.

3) I dont want to get the appointment title too long I think I can add it in a very short fashion.

If you like it and want to support the future development then a nice rating at the play store will be helpful

Regards
Annemarie

 

[donny02]

Hi Annemarie,

thank u for your reply. Just to clarify:

1. first I tried syncing an addressbook from server to fresh resetted phone and no appointments were generated. Then I cleared contacts and calendars on phone and server. Then in android I imported a file which I exported earlier from standard android contacts app. This created new file on server too. I'm not 100% sure, because I had to do it several times, but I think that was the moment when appointments were generated. If you say, they are created when synced from server, everything is good, but as I remember, it did not. But in addition it would be great to have an function to create these appointments from contacts no matter where they come from, even if they are already on the phone.

2. the wedding day comes from standard android 4.1 contact export / import. It is a contact with to dates, which look like this:
X-ANDROID-CUSTOM:vnd.android.cursor.item/contact_event;2011-04-15;1;;;;;;;;;;;;;
BDAY:1984-01-27
I think, the problem is, that first date has no valid name. The contact has a name, it is just the date.

3. that would be nice.

Regards,
Donny

 

[920904]

Hi,

1)Currently the appointments are generated when you import something into your device with my app, the source is not important (so local .vcf files on the device, mail attachments or contacts synced from a server -> all will generate appointments if this is enabled at the settings). But depending on the source my app checks if a import is really necessary, so if you have imported a lot of contacts previously then my app checks on the next sync if something at the contact data has been changed and only will update/import changed/new contacts.

So a reason for your experience can be that you first synced your contacts then later enabled the appointment (contact birthdays, and so on) generation at the settings of the app and then synced again and nothing happens because the old and new data on e.g. the server are the same => Therefore my app detects that nothing has to be synced (which is important to speed up the sync process) because nothing has been changed on eater side.

There is a workaround for such an issue available:

• If you are importing local files then you can set the app to overwrite/update existing contacts which have previously imported -> This will lead to an update/import and the appointments will be generated
• If you are syncing with a server then you can clean up the WebContact at the Created WebContact list (which will remove all the synced contacts from this specific WebContact on your device) and then start a new sync and all contacts will freshly loaded from your server and imported => appointments will be generated

2) Can you post the full content of the specific contact or send it to me using a private message of you dont want to show it to the public? (Of course it will be deleted as soon as possible afterwards) So that I can take a look on it.

3) I can send you a test version if you want to check it out upfront?

Regards
Annemarie

Hi Annemarie,

thank u for your reply. Just to clarify:

1. first I tried syncing an addressbook from server to fresh resetted phone and no appointments were generated. Then I cleared contacts and calendars on phone and server. Then in android I imported a file which I exported earlier from standard android contacts app. This created new file on server too. I'm not 100% sure, because I had to do it several times, but I think that was the moment when appointments were generated. If you say, they are created when synced from server, everything is good, but as I remember, it did not. But in addition it would be great to have an function to create these appointments from contacts no matter where they come from, even if they are already on the phone.

2. the wedding day comes from standard android 4.1 contact export / import. It is a contact with to dates, which look like this:
X-ANDROID-CUSTOM:vnd.android.cursor.item/contact_event;2011-04-15;1;;;;;;;;;;;;;
BDAY:1984-01-27
I think, the problem is, that first date has no valid name. The contact has a name, it is just the date.

3. that would be nice.

Regards,
Donny

 

[donny02]

Hi Annemarie,

I tested a fresh download from server as you suggested and birthdays were created in calendar. Very fine. Then I noticed, that the corrupt anniversary was already defect in contacts. So I took a look at addressbook on server and found the strange entry there too.
I anonymized it a bit an put it as attachment to this post. But I think the problem is just corrupt data, not your app.

Furthermore I saw, that entry BDAY is always in fomat YYYYMMTT but other dates are in format YYYY-MM-TT, at least on server. May this be a problem?

Now that everything is fine, I'm not sure that I want to experiment with a new version :fingers-crossed:
But if it helps, I will do it.

Regards,
Donny

 

[920904]

Hi Annemarie,

I tested a fresh download from server as you suggested and birthdays were created in calendar. Very fine. Then I noticed, that the corrupt anniversary was already defect in contacts. So I took a look at addressbook on server and found the strange entry there too.
I anonymized it a bit an put it as attachment to this post. But I think the problem is just corrupt data, not your app.

Furthermore I saw, that entry BDAY is always in fomat YYYYMMTT but other dates are in format YYYY-MM-TT, at least on server. May this be a problem?

Now that everything is fine, I'm not sure that I want to experiment with a new version :fingers-crossed:
But if it helps, I will do it.

Btw. I have released a app version which adds the additional birthdays details at the appointment subject.

Regards,
Donny

Hi Donny,

sorry for the late reply. Somehow I did not get a notification that you posted on the thread. Thanks for the nice feedback.
The standard does not propose or force any date format. So the app supports a bunch of possibilities and also supports the YYYY-MM-TT format. So this is no problem.

Regards
Anneamrie

 

[Ingo1271]

Hallo liebe Annemarie,

ich nutze nun schon seit einiger Zeit das contactSync auf meinem Android Telefon und bin sehr zufrieden.
Das Telefon wird mit meiner NAS und owncloud gesynct
Nun habe ich meine NAS auf owncloud 6.0.3 upgedatet und festgetellt, daß die
Kontaktsynchronisation nicht mehr funktioniert. Ist Deine App nur bis owncloud 5 kompatibel?
Gibt es hierzu bereits Meldungen?

Viele Grüße Ingo

 

[HansBKK]

looking for advice, from dev or anyone

Hi Annemarie,

Just read your GP text and paid straight away, seems just what I'm looking for, hope it works. I'm on Ubuntu Linux 12.04 & a Moto G 4.4, trying to avoid sync'ing via Google, but want to use their field structures, look very flexible & compatible w/ Apple. (Q1) Do you recommend their vCard or CardDav export layout for templating?

Ideally I'd like my "master" storage to be a folder of VCF files one item per (Q2), and I want a desktop editor that exposes access to all the various data field/types transparently (Q3). But of course I will need to handle routine daily maintenance from the phone (Q4).

Finally, (Q5) can you recommend a CardDav server that is simple (if possible) but must handle the flexibility of the custom data field/types. I don't care much about strict RFC compliance, but compatibility among these toolchain apps is obviously critical, which is why I'm starting as a virgin, with your consync at the center.

TIA for your help!

 

[HansBKK]

Hi Hans,

Yes the app is also compatible with Apple (also with iCloud if you need such a sync in the future). Basically their format is OK, but depending on the other clients you are using (e.g. Thunderbird or Evolution) you could have problems because they use some none standardized ways to specify details such as custom tags. But that's in general a problem if some application tries to specify details which were not foreseen by the standard.

All the other questions can mostly be addressed with a CardDAV server, e.g. Owncloud is an alternative which can be configured easily and is frequently used especially if you would find that a online web based editor would be useful. Servers are typically storing all data as is without any modifications to unknown/unsupported data fields but on the client side its typically so that only those fields can be seen/edited which are specifically supported so e.g. no custom tag can be added to a phone number and only the default ones specified at the server can be used.

BTW ContactSync supports all this situations also custom tags and preserves all details which are not supported by Android.

Regards
Annemarie

---------- Post added at 06:00 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:54 PM ----------

Actually Apple isn't an issue for me, I just noticed that **Google**'s "extensions" - field formats for groups, custom types etc - seem to match the way Apple also implements vCard / CardDav.

Therefore I decided to base my "personal canonical format" on Google's implementation, rather than just slavishly following the RFC specs perfectly, since it seems few mainstream vendors do that anyway.

Other (older client) apps that don't have full fidelity with all the information in my "master data store" will just be read-only "consumers" of that data; I won't use them to create / update records.

Thanks for the OwnCloud recommendation (Q5). That seems a bit "heavier" than I'd like for just serving CardDav, but I'll check out the installation process and give it a spin ASAP.

So to clarify my other Q's:

Q1 there are differences between the structures Google outputs when exporting via vCard, as opposed to when they're serving CardDAV data. I plan to choose one or the other as the basis for my "personal canonical" data templating, so my question to you is: *which of the two* would be better?

If you think it doesn't matter that's fine, obviously vCards are easier to deal with, and as I mentioned, I want my "master" data store to be a collection of vCard files, one file per record.


Q2 Can you recommend another CardDAV server that uses such a collection as its "live" data store?

I have found Marten Gadja's "Contact Editor Pro", which seems to be excellent for on-device edits, keeping full fidelity to my "personal canonical" data (Q4 - can you suggest a better editor for Android?), but it's obviously better to do bulk record creation and editing on the desktop.

Q3 Can you recommend a (Linux) desktop client (front-end to vCards or CardDav) that fully supports all those custom gContact/Apple extensions? Ideally with good sorting/ deduping/ merging capabilities as well.

If the best tool is OwnCloud's web-based client then OK I suppose, but I'd prefer something offline if possible.

 

[HansBKK]

Local VCF store - two-way not possible?

I've got a "WebContact" setup as a local VCF file on my Android.

No problems if I edit the VCF and then sync.

But editing the contact(s) in the Android account, then sync'ing leads to everything reverting to the previously saved state of the VCF file, even though 2-way is selected.

Any suggestion?

 

[920904]

I've got a "WebContact" setup as a local VCF file on my Android.

No problems if I edit the VCF and then sync.

But editing the contact(s) in the Android account, then sync'ing leads to everything reverting to the previously saved state of the VCF file, even though 2-way is selected.

Any suggestion?

Yes, you have most likely configured a incorrect path to the contact file, for writing the contact file it is important the the path is completely correct when for reading the contact file the app can look at various places until it finds the correct file. How does the path look that you have configured?
At the manual you can find a description how to configure the path:
Sync protocol local file:
Set this to sync my app periodically with contact files which are stored locally on your Android device. These files can then be synced by a Dropbox or other cloud apps. You will have to set the path at the URL box. The app will automatically follow the specified paths starting from /mnt/sdcard/. So for a file which is stored at /mnt/sdcard/testfolder/test.vcf you will only have to enter /testfolder/test.vcf. You can use the .. (used to go back one step at the path hierarchy) command for a file which is not stored below /mnt/sdcard/. So e.g. for following path /mnt/sdcardXX/testfolder/test.vcf you will have to enter /../sdcardXX/testfolder/test.vcf. If you only want only to parse a file sometimes you also can just open it like normal mp3 or pdf file. So just click on it in your preferred file explorer and it will be parsed by my app and then you can import it.

 

[HansBKK]

Note - the /storage/emulated/ path will also work to enable two-way sync via the local-text method

 

[920904]

Note - the /storage/emulated/ path will also work to enable two-way sync via the local-text method

Or you can simply use the built in dialog inside of the app were you can navigate to the file and a valid path is calculated by the app automatically. So theres no need to define a path manually.