Currently not possible to download group of contacts.

[brjhaverkamp]

At the moment it is not possible to select a single group of contacts and export/download it as a vcard file.
This used to be possible with the older contact app (last year)
Can this feature be re-added again?

Regards,

Bert

[irgendwie]

#43 only restores the export functionality - downloading specific groups separately is still not supported

[skjnldsv]

Oooh, sorry, you meant groups, I was thinking of addressbooks :(

[brjhaverkamp]

:-) Indeed. Selecting a contact group to download. (And multiple addresses or groups, I guess for completeness). I'm really missing it now I have to do my Christmas cards again..

But I see where you are coming from, didn't know that functionality had disappeared too.
Thanks for that addition!

[brjhaverkamp]

Hello, can you comment why this issue is closed?

Today I started my christmas card address list. I have a group for that in Nextcloud and it seems it is still not possible to download that group seperately. I now have to download my whole addressbook and script a filter.

[skjnldsv]

@brjhaverkamp this issue is not closed! :)

[skjnldsv]

This will require a php script from the server to filter out vcards or generate a single file from multiple vcards, should be straightforward though.

[brjhaverkamp]

Sounds good. 3.0? :-)

[skjnldsv]

@brjhaverkamp Not enough time available!
If someone want to take over and implement such function on server, then perfect. Otherwise too sort for 3.0! :(

[brjhaverkamp]

If you can point me at where I could integrate this, I could have a stab at it. Not in the coming weeks.(just started a new job) But christmas-card-season is slowly approaching, so around that time I have my yearly focus on the contacts app.

[skjnldsv]

Sure! :)

The vcf addressbook export is an official plugin, so you cannot edit it on nextcloud, but the source is available as inspiration: https://github.com/nextcloud/3rdparty/blob/master/sabre/dav/lib/CardDAV/VCFExportPlugin.php
Example of a nextcloud plugin for dav: https://github.com/nextcloud/server/blob/2e36069e24406455ad3f3998aa25e2a949d1402a/apps/dav/lib/CardDAV/ImageExportPlugin.php

The idea would be to allow to pass data to the ?export request on an addressbook to request a set of vcard? But this will only allow download by addressbook (which is fine, 99% of our users uses 1 addressbook, and we can trigger multiple requests depending on the addressbooks od the contacts I guess)

[charismatic-claire]

Hi, I just added a pull request for that. Please review and let me know, if that is acceptable!

[charismatic-claire]

Okay. Here are some architectural thoughts and ideas:

• From the "contacts" app, we are only calling a function, say a downloadGroup(group) function via the computed property groupsMenu() in the Contacts.vue component.
• This call basically is a HTTP GET request from an URL like this http://<SERVER_ADDRESS>/remote.php/dav/addressbooks/users/<USER_NAME>/<GROUP_NAME>?export
• The actual work happens on the server side. For this we need to make a pull request to the "server" project itself.
• What we need is a GroupExportPlugin.php with namespace OCA\DAV\CardDAV extending the "dav" application of the Nextcloud server.
• The GroupExportPlugin would extend the ServerPlugin from Sabre\DAV\ServerPlugin.
• We would use dav/appinfo/v1/carddav.php to register our new plugin.
• First major question would be: How to implement the magic we want?
• Second major question would be: How and where to register the routes properly?

Well, is that more or less what we want, or do I absolutely not get it?

[skjnldsv]

@charismatic-claire I started yesterday implementing the plugin! :)
I'll provide a pull request this morning.
You are mostly right on your points, only those I would make a cmall change:

This call basically is a HTTP GET request from an URL like this http://<SERVER_ADDRESS>/remote.php/dav/addressbooks/users/<USER_NAME>/<GROUP_NAME>?export

I would rather have a POST that takes an array of vcf url to be downloaded.
Like I said to allow groups download but also selections or searches

We would use dav/appinfo/v1/carddav.php to register our new plugin.

Apparently also on apps/dav/lib/Server.php, but yes :)

[charismatic-claire]

Wow, making a PR to the "server" project seem to get the attention of quite some people. I'm impressed by the amount of feedback you already got. I'll review your code as well... Thank's a lot for pushing things forward.

[skjnldsv]

@charismatic-claire Thanks!!
Yes server is quite active ;)

We're a bit stuck regarding the GET/POST request.
I'll let you read the other post and make your mind on it! :)
Your help is very welcome ;)

[charismatic-claire]

@skjnldsv I will update my PR as soon as possible... Thank you for your work and your encouragement. I learned a lot.
@georgehrke Thank you for your work as well!

[skjnldsv]

@charismatic-claire awesome!
Ping me if you need anything :)

[charismatic-claire]

Alright. So let's make a little plan first. What do we wanna do? Shall I just add download links to every group, so we can download it and that's it? Or do we wanna go for more?

In case we wanna go for more, I need a little bit more information. If you want, say download 2 groups at the same time, you would need a way to first select which groups you wanna download and then trigger the download. How would that look like? You could set "download checkmarks" first and trigger the download later on by clicking a button? Where would that button be?

If you wanna make a search or a manual selection of contacts to download, how would you first select and later on trigger the download? I'm not talking about the implementation, I'm talking about the interface design here.

Personally I would prefer to just add a download button to each group, like I did before. Only this time, I'll utilize the recently added capabilities of the backend. But I'm not sure if @skjnldsv would accept such a pull request. My understanding is... he wouldn't. So let's talk about it ;-)

[skjnldsv]

I would say, let's do it step by step! :)
Maybe create a function that trigger a download following Georg's hack (see nextcloud/cdav-library#39) with an array of urls within an addressbook.
So we can use it for the groups but also later use it for a selection or something :)

One issue is that we can have groups across multiple addressbooks, so we'll have to trigger as many REPORT as there are addressbooks. I'll let you figure out, this is just a matter of sorting the proper data and triggering the proper REPORT and download I guess :)

I'm completely fine with the download button for each group.

If you wanna make a search or a manual selection of contacts to download, how would you first select and later on trigger the download? I'm not talking about the implementation, I'm talking about the interface design here.

Let's see that for the 3.1.0 version ;)

[charismatic-claire]

Great. I like that. So let's do it. I'll let you know if I have something to show...

[charismatic-claire]

Yeah, I implemented a new version of this feature, using the multiget functionality. What do you think??? See pull request.

[brjhaverkamp]

Hello Charismatic-clair,

While you are on a roll with the contacts app of Nextcloud and this great improvement in issue 37, could I ask you to take a look at issue #42?
This is my other pet-peave regarding the LABEL field in the Vcard that is used in for instance the glabel program.