The representation amount of a vCard exceeds the possibilities of a meCard, but results in QR Code that is larger. Due to its more specific format options it is often used for business cards, where you have personal and business data together and have to distinguish them more exactly.
There are different specification versions of vCard:
- vCard 2.1 as defined in http://www.imc.org/pdi/vcard-21.txt
-
vCard 3.0 as IETF standard-track proposal contained in RFC 2425
and RFC 2426 -
vCard 4.0 defined in RFC 6350
with xCard (a new XML syntax) defined in RFC 6351
What’s inside the vCard?
The begin characters (‘BEGIN:VCARD’) and end characters (‘END:VCARD’) tells the decoding software the type of the embedded data.
Inside this tags you can specify your personal information. Note again, that no field is compulsory, it’s is possible to skip fields.
The data fields are called properties support for properties can eighter be mandatory or optional for vCard writers conforming to the selected specification. We will focus on introducing the mandatory properties, but introduce into some optional properties as well.
The properties are as follows and are separated through line breaks:
| vCard 2.1 Property | Description and specification |
|---|---|
| VERSION: | highest number of the vCard specs supported (here 2.1) |
| N: | name (semicolon separated: LASTNAME; FIRSTNAME; ADDITIONAL NAME; NAME PREFIX(Mr.,Mrs.); NAME SUFFIX) (mandatory in vCard 2.1) |
| FN: | formatted name (The way that the name is to be displayed. It can contain desired honorific prefixes, suffixes, titles.) |
| BDAY: | birthday (YYYMMDD) |
| ADR<;TYPE..>: | address (TYPE (can be concatenated) = DOM(domestic); INTL(international)(default);POSTAL(default); PARCEL(default);HOME;WORK(default)) (content fields are in order: Post Office Address ; Extended Address; Street; Locality; Region; Postal Code; Country) |
| LABEL |
allows to use =0D=0A as line break for individual lines within the vCard |
| TEL<;TYPE..>: | telephone number and type (TYPE (can be concatenated) = PREF; WORK; HOME; VOICE(default);FAX; MSG; CELL; PAGER;BBS;MODEM;CAR;ISDN;VIDEO) |
| EMAIL<;MAILTYPE>: | eMail address (MAILTYPE = AOL; AppleLink; ATTMail; CIS; eWorld; INTERNET(default); IBMMail; MCIMail; POWERSHARE; PRODIGY; TLX; X400) |
| TZ: | Time zone |
| GEO: | Geographic position |
| TITLE: | Job title, functional position or function |
| ROLE: | role, occupation or business category within an organization |
| ORG: | name and optionally the unit(s) of the organization (semicolon separated: ORGANIZATION NAME; ORGANIZATION UNIT; ORGANIZATION UNIT;..) |
| NOTE: | supplemental information |
| REV: | last revision , date of last update |
| URL: | represents Uniform Resource Locator |
| UID: | represents a persistent, globally unique identifier associated with the object |
| KEY<;TYPE>: | Public key (TYPE = X509; PGP) |
vCard 3.0 specifications:
Properties are defined a little bit different:
Instead of writing the TYPE you define, you have to write explicit ‘TYPE =’ and concatenate the types comma separated
TYPE = myTYPE, myTYPE2
vCard 4.0 specifications:
Properties differ from V3.0 as follows:
An explicit distinction between TYPE and VALUE occurs. Concatenating TYPEs need “.
In this cases it’s obsolete to use the :
A vCard object MUST include the VERSION and FN properties.
VERSION MUST come immediately after BEGIN:VCARD.
