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RFC 6350

vCard Format Specification

Pages: 74
Proposed Standard
Errata
Obsoletes:  242524264770
Updates:  2739
Updated by:  6868
Part 1 of 3 – Pages 1 to 22
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Top   ToC   RFC6350 - Page 1
Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)                      S. Perreault
Request for Comments: 6350                                      Viagenie
Obsoletes: 2425, 2426, 4770                                  August 2011
Updates: 2739
Category: Standards Track
ISSN: 2070-1721


                       vCard Format Specification

Abstract

This document defines the vCard data format for representing and exchanging a variety of information about individuals and other entities (e.g., formatted and structured name and delivery addresses, email address, multiple telephone numbers, photograph, logo, audio clips, etc.). This document obsoletes RFCs 2425, 2426, and 4770, and updates RFC 2739. Status of This Memo This is an Internet Standards Track document. This document is a product of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). It represents the consensus of the IETF community. It has received public review and has been approved for publication by the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG). Further information on Internet Standards is available in Section 2 of RFC 5741. Information about the current status of this document, any errata, and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6350. Copyright Notice Copyright (c) 2011 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the document authors. All rights reserved. This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document. Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as described in the Simplified BSD License.
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   This document may contain material from IETF Documents or IETF
   Contributions published or made publicly available before November
   10, 2008.  The person(s) controlling the copyright in some of this
   material may not have granted the IETF Trust the right to allow
   modifications of such material outside the IETF Standards Process.
   Without obtaining an adequate license from the person(s) controlling
   the copyright in such materials, this document may not be modified
   outside the IETF Standards Process, and derivative works of it may
   not be created outside the IETF Standards Process, except to format
   it for publication as an RFC or to translate it into languages other
   than English.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 2. Conventions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 3. vCard Format Specification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 3.1. Charset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 3.2. Line Delimiting and Folding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 3.3. ABNF Format Definition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 3.4. Property Value Escaping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 4. Property Value Data Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 4.1. TEXT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 4.2. URI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 4.3. DATE, TIME, DATE-TIME, DATE-AND-OR-TIME, and TIMESTAMP . . 12 4.3.1. DATE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 4.3.2. TIME . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 4.3.3. DATE-TIME . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 4.3.4. DATE-AND-OR-TIME . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 4.3.5. TIMESTAMP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 4.4. BOOLEAN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 4.5. INTEGER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 4.6. FLOAT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 4.7. UTC-OFFSET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 4.8. LANGUAGE-TAG . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 5. Property Parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 5.1. LANGUAGE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 5.2. VALUE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 5.3. PREF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 5.4. ALTID . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 5.5. PID . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 5.6. TYPE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 5.7. MEDIATYPE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 5.8. CALSCALE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 5.9. SORT-AS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 5.10. GEO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 5.11. TZ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
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   6.  vCard Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
     6.1.  General Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
       6.1.1.  BEGIN  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
       6.1.2.  END  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
       6.1.3.  SOURCE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
       6.1.4.  KIND . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
       6.1.5.  XML  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
     6.2.  Identification Properties  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
       6.2.1.  FN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
       6.2.2.  N  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
       6.2.3.  NICKNAME . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
       6.2.4.  PHOTO  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
       6.2.5.  BDAY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
       6.2.6.  ANNIVERSARY  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
       6.2.7.  GENDER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
     6.3.  Delivery Addressing Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
       6.3.1.  ADR  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
     6.4.  Communications Properties  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
       6.4.1.  TEL  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
       6.4.2.  EMAIL  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
       6.4.3.  IMPP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
       6.4.4.  LANG . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
     6.5.  Geographical Properties  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
       6.5.1.  TZ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
       6.5.2.  GEO  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
     6.6.  Organizational Properties  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
       6.6.1.  TITLE  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
       6.6.2.  ROLE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
       6.6.3.  LOGO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
       6.6.4.  ORG  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
       6.6.5.  MEMBER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
       6.6.6.  RELATED  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
     6.7.  Explanatory Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
       6.7.1.  CATEGORIES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
       6.7.2.  NOTE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
       6.7.3.  PRODID . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
       6.7.4.  REV  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
       6.7.5.  SOUND  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
       6.7.6.  UID  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
       6.7.7.  CLIENTPIDMAP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
       6.7.8.  URL  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
       6.7.9.  VERSION  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
     6.8.  Security Properties  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
       6.8.1.  KEY  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
     6.9.  Calendar Properties  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
       6.9.1.  FBURL  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
       6.9.2.  CALADRURI  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
       6.9.3.  CALURI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
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     6.10. Extended Properties and Parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
   7.  Synchronization  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
     7.1.  Mechanisms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
       7.1.1.  Matching vCard Instances . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
       7.1.2.  Matching Property Instances  . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
       7.1.3.  PID Matching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
     7.2.  Example  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
       7.2.1.  Creation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
       7.2.2.  Initial Sharing  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
       7.2.3.  Adding and Sharing a Property  . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
       7.2.4.  Simultaneous Editing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
       7.2.5.  Global Context Simplification  . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
   8.  Example: Author's vCard  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
   9.  Security Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
   10. IANA Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
     10.1. Media Type Registration  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
     10.2. Registering New vCard Elements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
       10.2.1. Registration Procedure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
       10.2.2. Vendor Namespace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
       10.2.3. Registration Template for Properties . . . . . . . . . 61
       10.2.4. Registration Template for Parameters . . . . . . . . . 61
       10.2.5. Registration Template for Value Data Types . . . . . . 62
       10.2.6. Registration Template for Values . . . . . . . . . . . 62
     10.3. Initial vCard Elements Registries  . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
       10.3.1. Properties Registry  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
       10.3.2. Parameters Registry  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
       10.3.3. Value Data Types Registry  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
       10.3.4. Values Registries  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
   11. Acknowledgments  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
   12. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
     12.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
     12.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
   Appendix A.  Differences from RFCs 2425 and 2426 . . . . . . . . . 73
     A.1.  New Structure  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
     A.2.  Removed Features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
     A.3.  New Properties and Parameters  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
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1. Introduction

Electronic address books have become ubiquitous. Their increased presence on portable, connected devices as well as the diversity of platforms that exchange contact data call for a standard. This memo defines the vCard format, which allows the capture and exchange of information normally stored within an address book or directory application. A high-level overview of the differences from RFCs 2425 and 2426 can be found in Appendix A.

2. Conventions

The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in [RFC2119].

3. vCard Format Specification

The text/vcard MIME content type (hereafter known as "vCard"; see Section 10.1) contains contact information, typically pertaining to a single contact or group of contacts. The content consists of one or more lines in the format given below.

3.1. Charset

The charset (see [RFC3536] for internationalization terminology) for vCard is UTF-8 as defined in [RFC3629]. There is no way to override this. It is invalid to specify a value other than "UTF-8" in the "charset" MIME parameter (see Section 10.1).

3.2. Line Delimiting and Folding

Individual lines within vCard are delimited by the [RFC5322] line break, which is a CRLF sequence (U+000D followed by U+000A). Long logical lines of text can be split into a multiple-physical-line representation using the following folding technique. Content lines SHOULD be folded to a maximum width of 75 octets, excluding the line break. Multi-octet characters MUST remain contiguous. The rationale for this folding process can be found in [RFC5322], Section 2.1.1. A logical line MAY be continued on the next physical line anywhere between two characters by inserting a CRLF immediately followed by a single white space character (space (U+0020) or horizontal tab (U+0009)). The folded line MUST contain at least one character. Any sequence of CRLF followed immediately by a single white space
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   character is ignored (removed) when processing the content type.  For
   example, the line:

     NOTE:This is a long description that exists on a long line.

   can be represented as:

     NOTE:This is a long description
       that exists on a long line.

   It could also be represented as:

     NOTE:This is a long descrip
      tion that exists o
      n a long line.

   The process of moving from this folded multiple-line representation
   of a property definition to its single-line representation is called
   unfolding.  Unfolding is accomplished by regarding CRLF immediately
   followed by a white space character (namely, HTAB (U+0009) or SPACE
   (U+0020)) as equivalent to no characters at all (i.e., the CRLF and
   single white space character are removed).

      Note: It is possible for very simple implementations to generate
      improperly folded lines in the middle of a UTF-8 multi-octet
      sequence.  For this reason, implementations SHOULD unfold lines in
      such a way as to properly restore the original sequence.

      Note: Unfolding is done differently than in [RFC5322].  Unfolding
      in [RFC5322] only removes the CRLF, not the space following it.

   Folding is done after any content encoding of a type value.
   Unfolding is done before any decoding of a type value in a content
   line.

3.3. ABNF Format Definition

The following ABNF uses the notation of [RFC5234], which also defines CRLF, WSP, DQUOTE, VCHAR, ALPHA, and DIGIT. vcard-entity = 1*vcard vcard = "BEGIN:VCARD" CRLF "VERSION:4.0" CRLF 1*contentline "END:VCARD" CRLF ; A vCard object MUST include the VERSION and FN properties. ; VERSION MUST come immediately after BEGIN:VCARD.
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   contentline = [group "."] name *(";" param) ":" value CRLF
     ; When parsing a content line, folded lines must first
     ; be unfolded according to the unfolding procedure
     ; described in Section 3.2.
     ; When generating a content line, lines longer than 75
     ; characters SHOULD be folded according to the folding
     ; procedure described in Section 3.2.

   group = 1*(ALPHA / DIGIT / "-")
   name  = "SOURCE" / "KIND" / "FN" / "N" / "NICKNAME"
         / "PHOTO" / "BDAY" / "ANNIVERSARY" / "GENDER" / "ADR" / "TEL"
         / "EMAIL" / "IMPP" / "LANG" / "TZ" / "GEO" / "TITLE" / "ROLE"
         / "LOGO" / "ORG" / "MEMBER" / "RELATED" / "CATEGORIES"
         / "NOTE" / "PRODID" / "REV" / "SOUND" / "UID" / "CLIENTPIDMAP"
         / "URL" / "KEY" / "FBURL" / "CALADRURI" / "CALURI" / "XML"
         / iana-token / x-name
     ; Parsing of the param and value is based on the "name" as
     ; defined in ABNF sections below.
     ; Group and name are case-insensitive.

   iana-token = 1*(ALPHA / DIGIT / "-")
     ; identifier registered with IANA

   x-name = "x-" 1*(ALPHA / DIGIT / "-")
     ; Names that begin with "x-" or "X-" are
     ; reserved for experimental use, not intended for released
     ; products, or for use in bilateral agreements.

   param = language-param / value-param / pref-param / pid-param
         / type-param / geo-parameter / tz-parameter / sort-as-param
         / calscale-param / any-param
     ; Allowed parameters depend on property name.

   param-value = *SAFE-CHAR / DQUOTE *QSAFE-CHAR DQUOTE

   any-param  = (iana-token / x-name) "=" param-value *("," param-value)

   NON-ASCII = UTF8-2 / UTF8-3 / UTF8-4
     ; UTF8-{2,3,4} are defined in [RFC3629]

   QSAFE-CHAR = WSP / "!" / %x23-7E / NON-ASCII
     ; Any character except CTLs, DQUOTE

   SAFE-CHAR = WSP / "!" / %x23-39 / %x3C-7E / NON-ASCII
     ; Any character except CTLs, DQUOTE, ";", ":"

   VALUE-CHAR = WSP / VCHAR / NON-ASCII
     ; Any textual character
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   A line that begins with a white space character is a continuation of
   the previous line, as described in Section 3.2.  The white space
   character and immediately preceeding CRLF should be discarded when
   reconstructing the original line.  Note that this line-folding
   convention differs from that found in [RFC5322], in that the sequence
   <CRLF><WSP> found anywhere in the content indicates a continued line
   and should be removed.

   Property names and parameter names are case-insensitive (e.g., the
   property name "fn" is the same as "FN" and "Fn").  Parameter values
   MAY be case-sensitive or case-insensitive, depending on their
   definition.  Parameter values that are not explicitly defined as
   being case-sensitive are case-insensitive.  Based on experience with
   vCard 3 interoperability, it is RECOMMENDED that property and
   parameter names be upper-case on output.

   The group construct is used to group related properties together.
   The group name is a syntactic convention used to indicate that all
   property names prefaced with the same group name SHOULD be grouped
   together when displayed by an application.  It has no other
   significance.  Implementations that do not understand or support
   grouping MAY simply strip off any text before a "." to the left of
   the type name and present the types and values as normal.

   Property cardinalities are indicated using the following notation,
   which is based on ABNF (see [RFC5234], Section 3.6):

    +-------------+--------------------------------------------------+
    | Cardinality | Meaning                                          |
    +-------------+--------------------------------------------------+
    |      1      | Exactly one instance per vCard MUST be present.  |
    |      *1     | Exactly one instance per vCard MAY be present.   |
    |      1*     | One or more instances per vCard MUST be present. |
    |      *      | One or more instances per vCard MAY be present.  |
    +-------------+--------------------------------------------------+

   Properties defined in a vCard instance may have multiple values
   depending on the property cardinality.  The general rule for encoding
   multi-valued properties is to simply create a new content line for
   each value (including the property name).  However, it should be
   noted that some value types support encoding multiple values in a
   single content line by separating the values with a comma ",".  This
   approach has been taken for several of the content types defined
   below (date, time, integer, float).
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3.4. Property Value Escaping

Some properties may contain one or more values delimited by a COMMA character (U+002C). Therefore, a COMMA character in a value MUST be escaped with a BACKSLASH character (U+005C), even for properties that don't allow multiple instances (for consistency). Some properties (e.g., N and ADR) comprise multiple fields delimited by a SEMICOLON character (U+003B). Therefore, a SEMICOLON in a field of such a "compound" property MUST be escaped with a BACKSLASH character. SEMICOLON characters in non-compound properties MAY be escaped. On input, an escaped SEMICOLON character is never a field separator. An unescaped SEMICOLON character may be a field separator, depending on the property in which it appears. Furthermore, some fields of compound properties may contain a list of values delimited by a COMMA character. Therefore, a COMMA character in one of a field's values MUST be escaped with a BACKSLASH character, even for fields that don't allow multiple values (for consistency). Compound properties allowing multiple instances MUST NOT be encoded in a single content line. Finally, BACKSLASH characters in values MUST be escaped with a BACKSLASH character. NEWLINE (U+000A) characters in values MUST be encoded by two characters: a BACKSLASH followed by either an 'n' (U+006E) or an 'N' (U+004E). In all other cases, escaping MUST NOT be used.

4. Property Value Data Types

Standard value types are defined below. value = text / text-list / date-list / time-list / date-time-list / date-and-or-time-list / timestamp-list / boolean / integer-list / float-list / URI ; from Section 3 of [RFC3986] / utc-offset / Language-Tag / iana-valuespec ; Actual value type depends on property name and VALUE parameter.
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     text = *TEXT-CHAR

     TEXT-CHAR = "\\" / "\," / "\n" / WSP / NON-ASCII
               / %x21-2B / %x2D-5B / %x5D-7E
        ; Backslashes, commas, and newlines must be encoded.

     component = "\\" / "\," / "\;" / "\n" / WSP / NON-ASCII
               / %x21-2B / %x2D-3A / %x3C-5B / %x5D-7E
     list-component = component *("," component)

     text-list             = text             *("," text)
     date-list             = date             *("," date)
     time-list             = time             *("," time)
     date-time-list        = date-time        *("," date-time)
     date-and-or-time-list = date-and-or-time *("," date-and-or-time)
     timestamp-list        = timestamp        *("," timestamp)
     integer-list          = integer          *("," integer)
     float-list            = float            *("," float)

     boolean = "TRUE" / "FALSE"
     integer = [sign] 1*DIGIT
     float   = [sign] 1*DIGIT ["." 1*DIGIT]

     sign = "+" / "-"

     year   = 4DIGIT  ; 0000-9999
     month  = 2DIGIT  ; 01-12
     day    = 2DIGIT  ; 01-28/29/30/31 depending on month and leap year
     hour   = 2DIGIT  ; 00-23
     minute = 2DIGIT  ; 00-59
     second = 2DIGIT  ; 00-58/59/60 depending on leap second
     zone   = utc-designator / utc-offset
     utc-designator = %x5A  ; uppercase "Z"

     date          = year    [month  day]
                   / year "-" month
                   / "--"     month [day]
                   / "--"      "-"   day
     date-noreduc  = year     month  day
                   / "--"     month  day
                   / "--"      "-"   day
     date-complete = year     month  day

     time          = hour [minute [second]] [zone]
                   /  "-"  minute [second]  [zone]
                   /  "-"   "-"    second   [zone]
     time-notrunc  = hour [minute [second]] [zone]
     time-complete = hour  minute  second   [zone]
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     time-designator = %x54  ; uppercase "T"
     date-time = date-noreduc  time-designator time-notrunc
     timestamp = date-complete time-designator time-complete

     date-and-or-time = date-time / date / time-designator time

     utc-offset = sign hour [minute]

     Language-Tag = <Language-Tag, defined in [RFC5646], Section 2.1>

     iana-valuespec = <value-spec, see Section 12>
                    ; a publicly defined valuetype format, registered
                    ; with IANA, as defined in Section 12 of this
                    ; document.

4.1. TEXT

"text": The "text" value type should be used to identify values that contain human-readable text. As for the language, it is controlled by the LANGUAGE property parameter defined in Section 5.1. Examples for "text": this is a text value this is one value,this is another this is a single value\, with a comma encoded A formatted text line break in a text value type MUST be represented as the character sequence backslash (U+005C) followed by a Latin small letter n (U+006E) or a Latin capital letter N (U+004E), that is, "\n" or "\N". For example, a multiple line NOTE value of: Mythical Manager Hyjinx Software Division BabsCo, Inc. could be represented as: NOTE:Mythical Manager\nHyjinx Software Division\n BabsCo\, Inc.\n demonstrating the \n literal formatted line break technique, the CRLF-followed-by-space line folding technique, and the backslash escape technique.
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4.2. URI

"uri": The "uri" value type should be used to identify values that are referenced by a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) instead of encoded in-line. These value references might be used if the value is too large, or otherwise undesirable to include directly. The format for the URI is as defined in Section 3 of [RFC3986]. Note that the value of a property of type "uri" is what the URI points to, not the URI itself. Examples for "uri": http://www.example.com/my/picture.jpg ldap://ldap.example.com/cn=babs%20jensen

4.3. DATE, TIME, DATE-TIME, DATE-AND-OR-TIME, and TIMESTAMP

"date", "time", "date-time", "date-and-or-time", and "timestamp": Each of these value types is based on the definitions in [ISO.8601.2004]. Multiple such values can be specified using the comma-separated notation. Only the basic format is supported.

4.3.1. DATE

A calendar date as specified in [ISO.8601.2004], Section 4.1.2. Reduced accuracy, as specified in [ISO.8601.2004], Sections 4.1.2.3 a) and b), but not c), is permitted. Expanded representation, as specified in [ISO.8601.2004], Section 4.1.4, is forbidden. Truncated representation, as specified in [ISO.8601.2000], Sections 5.2.1.3 d), e), and f), is permitted. Examples for "date": 19850412 1985-04 1985 --0412 ---12
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   Note the use of YYYY-MM in the second example above.  YYYYMM is
   disallowed to prevent confusion with YYMMDD.  Note also that
   YYYY-MM-DD is disallowed since we are using the basic format instead
   of the extended format.

4.3.2. TIME

A time of day as specified in [ISO.8601.2004], Section 4.2. Reduced accuracy, as specified in [ISO.8601.2004], Section 4.2.2.3, is permitted. Representation with decimal fraction, as specified in [ISO.8601.2004], Section 4.2.2.4, is forbidden. The midnight hour is always represented by 00, never 24 (see [ISO.8601.2004], Section 4.2.3). Truncated representation, as specified in [ISO.8601.2000], Sections 5.3.1.4 a), b), and c), is permitted. Examples for "time": 102200 1022 10 -2200 --00 102200Z 102200-0800

4.3.3. DATE-TIME

A date and time of day combination as specified in [ISO.8601.2004], Section 4.3. Truncation of the date part, as specified in [ISO.8601.2000], Section 5.4.2 c), is permitted. Examples for "date-time": 19961022T140000 --1022T1400 ---22T14
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4.3.4. DATE-AND-OR-TIME

Either a DATE-TIME, a DATE, or a TIME value. To allow unambiguous interpretation, a stand-alone TIME value is always preceded by a "T". Examples for "date-and-or-time": 19961022T140000 --1022T1400 ---22T14 19850412 1985-04 1985 --0412 ---12 T102200 T1022 T10 T-2200 T--00 T102200Z T102200-0800

4.3.5. TIMESTAMP

A complete date and time of day combination as specified in [ISO.8601.2004], Section 4.3.2. Examples for "timestamp": 19961022T140000 19961022T140000Z 19961022T140000-05 19961022T140000-0500

4.4. BOOLEAN

"boolean": The "boolean" value type is used to express boolean values. These values are case-insensitive. Examples: TRUE false True
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4.5. INTEGER

"integer": The "integer" value type is used to express signed integers in decimal format. If sign is not specified, the value is assumed positive "+". Multiple "integer" values can be specified using the comma-separated notation. The maximum value is 9223372036854775807, and the minimum value is -9223372036854775808. These limits correspond to a signed 64-bit integer using two's- complement arithmetic. Examples: 1234567890 -1234556790 +1234556790,432109876

4.6. FLOAT

"float": The "float" value type is used to express real numbers. If sign is not specified, the value is assumed positive "+". Multiple "float" values can be specified using the comma-separated notation. Implementations MUST support a precision equal or better than that of the IEEE "binary64" format [IEEE.754.2008]. Note: Scientific notation is disallowed. Implementers wishing to use their favorite language's %f formatting should be careful. Examples: 20.30 1000000.0000001 1.333,3.14

4.7. UTC-OFFSET

"utc-offset": The "utc-offset" value type specifies that the property value is a signed offset from UTC. This value type can be specified in the TZ property. The value type is an offset from Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). It is specified as a positive or negative difference in units of hours and minutes (e.g., +hhmm). The time is specified as a 24-hour clock. Hour values are from 00 to 23, and minute values are from 00 to 59. Hour and minutes are 2 digits with high-order zeroes required to maintain digit count. The basic format for ISO 8601 UTC offsets MUST be used.
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4.8. LANGUAGE-TAG

"language-tag": A single language tag, as defined in [RFC5646].

5. Property Parameters

A property can have attributes associated with it. These "property parameters" contain meta-information about the property or the property value. In some cases, the property parameter can be multi- valued in which case the property parameter value elements are separated by a COMMA (U+002C). Property parameter value elements that contain the COLON (U+003A), SEMICOLON (U+003B), or COMMA (U+002C) character separators MUST be specified as quoted-string text values. Property parameter values MUST NOT contain the DQUOTE (U+0022) character. The DQUOTE character is used as a delimiter for parameter values that contain restricted characters or URI text. Applications MUST ignore x-param and iana-param values they don't recognize.

5.1. LANGUAGE

The LANGUAGE property parameter is used to identify data in multiple languages. There is no concept of "default" language, except as specified by any "Content-Language" MIME header parameter that is present [RFC3282]. The value of the LANGUAGE property parameter is a language tag as defined in Section 2 of [RFC5646]. Examples: ROLE;LANGUAGE=tr:hoca ABNF: language-param = "LANGUAGE=" Language-Tag ; Language-Tag is defined in section 2.1 of RFC 5646

5.2. VALUE

The VALUE parameter is OPTIONAL, used to identify the value type (data type) and format of the value. The use of these predefined formats is encouraged even if the value parameter is not explicitly used. By defining a standard set of value types and their formats, existing parsing and processing code can be leveraged. The
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   predefined data type values MUST NOT be repeated in COMMA-separated
   value lists except within the N, NICKNAME, ADR, and CATEGORIES
   properties.

   ABNF:

     value-param = "VALUE=" value-type

     value-type = "text"
                / "uri"
                / "date"
                / "time"
                / "date-time"
                / "date-and-or-time"
                / "timestamp"
                / "boolean"
                / "integer"
                / "float"
                / "utc-offset"
                / "language-tag"
                / iana-token  ; registered as described in section 12
                / x-name

5.3. PREF

The PREF parameter is OPTIONAL and is used to indicate that the corresponding instance of a property is preferred by the vCard author. Its value MUST be an integer between 1 and 100 that quantifies the level of preference. Lower values correspond to a higher level of preference, with 1 being most preferred. When the parameter is absent, the default MUST be to interpret the property instance as being least preferred. Note that the value of this parameter is to be interpreted only in relation to values assigned to other instances of the same property in the same vCard. A given value, or the absence of a value, MUST NOT be interpreted on its own. This parameter MAY be applied to any property that allows multiple instances. ABNF: pref-param = "PREF=" (1*2DIGIT / "100") ; An integer between 1 and 100.
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5.4. ALTID

The ALTID parameter is used to "tag" property instances as being alternative representations of the same logical property. For example, translations of a property in multiple languages generates multiple property instances having different LANGUAGE (Section 5.1) parameter that are tagged with the same ALTID value. This parameter's value is treated as an opaque string. Its sole purpose is to be compared for equality against other ALTID parameter values. Two property instances are considered alternative representations of the same logical property if and only if their names as well as the value of their ALTID parameters are identical. Property instances without the ALTID parameter MUST NOT be considered an alternative representation of any other property instance. Values for the ALTID parameter are not globally unique: they MAY be reused for different property names. Property instances having the same ALTID parameter value count as 1 toward cardinality. Therefore, since N (Section 6.2.2) has cardinality *1 and TITLE (Section 6.6.1) has cardinality *, these three examples would be legal: N;ALTID=1;LANGUAGE=jp:<U+5C71><U+7530>;<U+592A><U+90CE>;;; N;ALTID=1;LANGUAGE=en:Yamada;Taro;;; (<U+XXXX> denotes a UTF8-encoded Unicode character.) TITLE;ALTID=1;LANGUAGE=fr:Patron TITLE;ALTID=1;LANGUAGE=en:Boss TITLE;ALTID=1;LANGUAGE=fr:Patron TITLE;ALTID=1;LANGUAGE=en:Boss TITLE;ALTID=2;LANGUAGE=en:Chief vCard Evangelist while this one would not: N;ALTID=1;LANGUAGE=jp:<U+5C71><U+7530>;<U+592A><U+90CE>;;; N:Yamada;Taro;;; (Two instances of the N property.) and these three would be legal but questionable: TITLE;ALTID=1;LANGUAGE=fr:Patron TITLE;ALTID=2;LANGUAGE=en:Boss (Should probably have the same ALTID value.)
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     TITLE;ALTID=1;LANGUAGE=fr:Patron
     TITLE:LANGUAGE=en:Boss
     (Second line should probably have ALTID=1.)

     N;ALTID=1;LANGUAGE=jp:<U+5C71><U+7530>;<U+592A><U+90CE>;;;
     N;ALTID=1;LANGUAGE=en:Yamada;Taro;;;
     N;ALTID=1;LANGUAGE=en:Smith;John;;;
     (The last line should probably have ALTID=2.  But that would be
      illegal because N has cardinality *1.)

   The ALTID property MAY also be used in may contexts other than with
   the LANGUAGE parameter.  Here's an example with two representations
   of the same photo in different file formats:

     PHOTO;ALTID=1:data:image/jpeg;base64,...
     PHOTO;ALTID=1;data:image/jp2;base64,...

   ABNF:

           altid-param = "ALTID=" param-value

5.5. PID

The PID parameter is used to identify a specific property among multiple instances. It plays a role analogous to the UID property (Section 6.7.6) on a per-property instead of per-vCard basis. It MAY appear more than once in a given property. It MUST NOT appear on properties that may have only one instance per vCard. Its value is either a single small positive integer or a pair of small positive integers separated by a dot. Multiple values may be encoded in a single PID parameter by separating the values with a comma ",". See Section 7 for more details on its usage. ABNF: pid-param = "PID=" pid-value *("," pid-value) pid-value = 1*DIGIT ["." 1*DIGIT]

5.6. TYPE

The TYPE parameter has multiple, different uses. In general, it is a way of specifying class characteristics of the associated property. Most of the time, its value is a comma-separated subset of a predefined enumeration. In this document, the following properties make use of this parameter: FN, NICKNAME, PHOTO, ADR, TEL, EMAIL, IMPP, LANG, TZ, GEO, TITLE, ROLE, LOGO, ORG, RELATED, CATEGORIES,
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   NOTE, SOUND, URL, KEY, FBURL, CALADRURI, and CALURI.  The TYPE
   parameter MUST NOT be applied on other properties defined in this
   document.

   The "work" and "home" values act like tags.  The "work" value implies
   that the property is related to an individual's work place, while the
   "home" value implies that the property is related to an individual's
   personal life.  When neither "work" nor "home" is present, it is
   implied that the property is related to both an individual's work
   place and personal life in the case that the KIND property's value is
   "individual", or to none in other cases.

   ABNF:

           type-param = "TYPE=" type-value *("," type-value)

           type-value = "work" / "home" / type-param-tel
                      / type-param-related / iana-token / x-name
             ; This is further defined in individual property sections.

5.7. MEDIATYPE

The MEDIATYPE parameter is used with properties whose value is a URI. Its use is OPTIONAL. It provides a hint to the vCard consumer application about the media type [RFC2046] of the resource identified by the URI. Some URI schemes do not need this parameter. For example, the "data" scheme allows the media type to be explicitly indicated as part of the URI [RFC2397]. Another scheme, "http", provides the media type as part of the URI resolution process, with the Content-Type HTTP header [RFC2616]. The MEDIATYPE parameter is intended to be used with URI schemes that do not provide such functionality (e.g., "ftp" [RFC1738]). ABNF: mediatype-param = "MEDIATYPE=" mediatype mediatype = type-name "/" subtype-name *( ";" attribute "=" value ) ; "attribute" and "value" are from [RFC2045] ; "type-name" and "subtype-name" are from [RFC4288]

5.8. CALSCALE

The CALSCALE parameter is identical to the CALSCALE property in iCalendar (see [RFC5545], Section 3.7.1). It is used to define the calendar system in which a date or date-time value is expressed. The only value specified by iCalendar is "gregorian", which stands for the Gregorian system. It is the default when the parameter is absent. Additional values may be defined in extension documents and
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   registered with IANA (see Section 10.3.4).  A vCard implementation
   MUST ignore properties with a CALSCALE parameter value that it does
   not understand.

   ABNF:

           calscale-param = "CALSCALE=" calscale-value

           calscale-value = "gregorian" / iana-token / x-name

5.9. SORT-AS

The "sort-as" parameter is used to specify the string to be used for national-language-specific sorting. Without this information, sorting algorithms could incorrectly sort this vCard within a sequence of sorted vCards. When this property is present in a vCard, then the given strings are used for sorting the vCard. This parameter's value is a comma-separated list that MUST have as many or fewer elements as the corresponding property value has components. This parameter's value is case-sensitive. ABNF: sort-as-param = "SORT-AS=" sort-as-value sort-as-value = param-value *("," param-value) Examples: For the case of surname and given name sorting, the following examples define common sort string usage with the N property. FN:Rene van der Harten N;SORT-AS="Harten,Rene":van der Harten;Rene,J.;Sir;R.D.O.N. FN:Robert Pau Shou Chang N;SORT-AS="Pau Shou Chang,Robert":Shou Chang;Robert,Pau;; FN:Osamu Koura N;SORT-AS="Koura,Osamu":Koura;Osamu;; FN:Oscar del Pozo N;SORT-AS="Pozo,Oscar":del Pozo Triscon;Oscar;; FN:Chistine d'Aboville N;SORT-AS="Aboville,Christine":d'Aboville;Christine;;
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           FN:H. James de Mann
           N;SORT-AS="Mann,James":de Mann;Henry,James;;

   If sorted by surname, the results would be:

           Christine d'Aboville
           Rene van der Harten
           Osamu Koura
           H. James de Mann
           Robert Pau Shou Chang
           Oscar del Pozo

   If sorted by given name, the results would be:

           Christine d'Aboville
           H. James de Mann
           Osamu Koura
           Oscar del Pozo
           Rene van der Harten
           Robert Pau Shou Chang

5.10. GEO

The GEO parameter can be used to indicate global positioning information that is specific to an address. Its value is the same as that of the GEO property (see Section 6.5.2). ABNF: geo-parameter = "GEO=" DQUOTE URI DQUOTE

5.11. TZ

The TZ parameter can be used to indicate time zone information that is specific to an address. Its value is the same as that of the TZ property. ABNF: tz-parameter = "TZ=" (param-value / DQUOTE URI DQUOTE)


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