In LDAP / Palm OS integration, we struggled with one of our favorite problems: integrating our Palm OS address database with email. Well, since then, we have been using SquirrelMail for most everything. We still do use our Palms as well. SquirrelMail can be configured to share the address book simply by creating a symbolic link from the individual user to the shared address book. We have updated our contacts via this for a long time. Unfortunately, we haven’t been very good about having an LDAP server available, so we are just using SquirrelMail’s flat file storage. There is a cool perl module called p5-Palm that lets you parse out a pdb file. Let’s grab p5-Palm, install it, and test:
u-1@srv-1 r $ tar -xzf *.gz u-1@srv-1 r $ ls p5-Palm-1.003_000 p5-Palm-1.3.0.tar.gz u-1@srv-1 r $ cd p* u-1@srv-1 p5-Palm-1.003_000 $ perl Makefile.PL Checking if your kit is complete... Looks good Writing Makefile for Palm u-1@srv-1 p5-Palm-1.003_000 $ u-1@srv-1 p5-Palm-1.003_000 $ make cp Palm/Mail.pm blib/lib/Palm/Mail.pm cp Palm/Memo.pm blib/lib/Palm/Memo.pm cp Palm/StdAppInfo.pm blib/lib/Palm/StdAppInfo.pm cp Palm/PDB.pm blib/lib/Palm/PDB.pm cp Palm/Address.pm blib/lib/Palm/Address.pm cp Palm/ToDo.pm blib/lib/Palm/ToDo.pm cp Palm/Raw.pm blib/lib/Palm/Raw.pm cp Palm/Datebook.pm blib/lib/Palm/Datebook.pm cp util/pdbdump blib/script/pdbdump /usr/bin/perl "-MExtUtils::MY" -e "MY->fixin(shift)" blib/script/pdbdump Manifying blib/man3/Palm::Mail.3pm Manifying blib/man3/Palm::Memo.3pm Manifying blib/man1/pdbdump.1 Manifying blib/man3/Palm::Address.3pm Manifying blib/man3/Palm::PDB.3pm Manifying blib/man3/Palm::StdAppInfo.3pm Manifying blib/man3/Palm::Datebook.3pm Manifying blib/man3/Palm::Raw.3pm Manifying blib/man3/Palm::ToDo.3pm u-1@srv-1 p5-Palm-1.003_000 $ su Password: root@srv-1 p5-Palm-1.003_000 # make install Installing /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.0/Palm/Mail.pm Installing /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.0/Palm/Memo.pm Installing /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.0/Palm/StdAppInfo.pm Installing /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.0/Palm/PDB.pm Installing /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.0/Palm/Address.pm Installing /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.0/Palm/ToDo.pm Installing /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.0/Palm/Raw.pm Installing /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.0/Palm/Datebook.pm Installing /usr/man/man1/pdbdump.1 Installing /usr/man/man3pm/Palm::Mail.3pm Installing /usr/man/man3pm/Palm::Memo.3pm Installing /usr/man/man3pm/Palm::Address.3pm Installing /usr/man/man3pm/Palm::PDB.3pm Installing /usr/man/man3pm/Palm::StdAppInfo.3pm Installing /usr/man/man3pm/Palm::Datebook.3pm Installing /usr/man/man3pm/Palm::Raw.3pm Installing /usr/man/man3pm/Palm::ToDo.3pm Installing /usr/bin/pdbdump Writing /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.0/i686-linux/auto/Palm/.packlist Appending installation info to /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.0/i686-linux/perllocal.pod root@srv-1 p5-Palm-1.003_000 # root@srv-1 p5-Palm-1.003_000 # perl test.pl 1..1 ok 1 root@srv-1 p5-Palm-1.003_000 # |
To dump out a pdb file, you can use pdbdump, which is in the util directory:
root@srv-1 util # perl pdbdump -nohex -MPalm::Address AddressDB.pdb . . . Record 91 fields: firstName -> [John] phone3 -> [555.555.2128] name -> [Doe] phone2 -> [555.255.6538] id -> [15708259] category -> [7] phoneLabel: phone3 -> [1] phone1 -> [0] phone5 -> [4] phone4 -> [3] reserved -> [147] phone2 -> [7] display -> [1] attributes: dirty -> [1] |
Now, there is a very nice module that will import and export csv files to and from your address book in SquirrelMail. You can get it here. It will put this on the bottom of your address page:
Now, our idea is to put all of the other info (cell phone, address, notes, etc,) in the “Info” field. Since we share the address book, and mainly Agatha wants to see the extra details, we hacked up addressbook.php:
[root@main src]# diff addressbook.php addressbookfull.php
60c60
<
---
>
312d311
< echo html_tag( 'p', '<a href="addressbookfull.php">' . _("Full View") .
'', 'center' ) . "\n";
397c396
< html_tag( 'td', ' ' . htmlspecialchars($row['labelx']) .
' ', 'left', '', 'valign="top" width="1%"' ) .
---
> html_tag( 'td', ' ' . htmlspecialchars($row['label']) .
' ', 'left', '', 'valign="top" width="1%"' ) .
[root@main src]#
|
This puts a link to the full view on the main addressbook page. One tidbit about the docs for p5-Palm. If you want to read the docs:
root@srv-1 p5-Palm-1.003_000 # pod2text Palm/PDB.pm | less |
OK. Now, we need to import data from our Palm pdb database. Well, this script will do it:
use Palm::PDB;
use Palm::Address;
my $pdb = new Palm::PDB;
$pdb->Load("AddressDB.pdb");
for $record (sort @{$pdb->{records}}) {
$cat = $pdb->{appinfo}{categories}->[$record->{'category'}]{'name'};
$nick = "p".$record->{fields}{firstName}.$record->{fields}{name};
$first= $record->{fields}{firstName};
$last= $record->{fields}{name};
$address= $record->{fields}{address};
$city= $record->{fields}{city};
$state= $record->{fields}{state};
$zip= $record->{fields}{zipCode};
$note= $record->{fields}{note};
$ph="";
$email="";
for($i=1;$i<6;$i++){
if($record->{fields}{"phone".$i} ne ""){
$ptype = $record->{phoneLabel}{"phone".$i};
if($ptype == 0){
$ph.=" WK:".$record->{fields}{"phone".$i};
}
if($ptype == 1){
$ph.=" HM:".$record->{fields}{"phone".$i};
}
if($ptype == 2){
$ph.=" FX:".$record->{fields}{"phone".$i};
}
if($ptype == 3){
$ph.=" OT:".$record->{fields}{"phone".$i};
}
if($ptype == 4){
$email=$record->{fields}{"phone".$i};
}
if($ptype == 5){
$ph.=" MN:".$record->{fields}{"phone".$i};
}
if($ptype == 6){
$ph.=" PG:".$record->{fields}{"phone".$i};
}
if($ptype == 7){
$ph.=" CL:".$record->{fields}{"phone".$i};
}
}
}
$nick=~ s/,/~/g;
$last=~ s/,/~/g;
$first=~ s/,/~/g;
$address=~ s/,/~/g;
$address=~ s/\n/ > /g;
$note=~ s/,/~/g;
$note=~ s/\n/ > /g;
print $nick.",".$first.",".$last.",".$email.",".$ph;
print " ".$address."-".$city."-".$state."-".$zip."-".$note."\n";
}
print $record;
|
Just put the AddressDB.pdb in the current directory. Redirect the output to a csv file, and import it into SquirrelMail. All is good.
This can even be simpler if you are willing to replace the entire address book, since the abook format is a slight variation on a csv format. Note that we get rid of returns and commas in the above script. It is probably best to leave those out of your data, as this will just mess up csv imports and exports. You can use a | character, though, in the abook format. This script will write pdb files directy to the abook format used by squirrelmail:
use Palm::PDB;
use Palm::Address;
my $pdb = new Palm::PDB;
$pdb->Load("AddressDB.pdb");
for $record (sort @{$pdb->{records}}) {
$cat = $pdb->{appinfo}{categories}->[$record->{'category'}]{'name'};
$nick = "p".$record->{fields}{firstName}.$record->{fields}{name};
$first= $record->{fields}{firstName};
$last= $record->{fields}{name};
$address= $record->{fields}{address};
$city= $record->{fields}{city};
$state= $record->{fields}{state};
$zip= $record->{fields}{zipCode};
$note= $record->{fields}{note};
$ph="";
$email="";
for($i=1;$i<6;$i++){
if($record->{fields}{"phone".$i} ne ""){
$ptype = $record->{phoneLabel}{"phone".$i};
if($ptype == 0){
$ph.=" WK:".$record->{fields}{"phone".$i};
}
if($ptype == 1){
$ph.=" HM:".$record->{fields}{"phone".$i};
}
if($ptype == 2){
$ph.=" FX:".$record->{fields}{"phone".$i};
}
if($ptype == 3){
$ph.=" OT:".$record->{fields}{"phone".$i};
}
if($ptype == 4){
$email=$record->{fields}{"phone".$i};
}
if($ptype == 5){
$ph.=" MN:".$record->{fields}{"phone".$i};
}
if($ptype == 6){
$ph.=" PG:".$record->{fields}{"phone".$i};
}
if($ptype == 7){
$ph.=" CL:".$record->{fields}{"phone".$i};
}
}
}
$nick=~ s/,/~/g;
$last=~ s/,/~/g;
$first=~ s/,/~/g;
$address=~ s/,/~/g;
$address=~ s/\n/ > /g;
$note=~ s/,/~/g;
$note=~ s/\n/ > /g;
print $nick."|".$first."|".$last."|".$email."|".$ph;
print " ".$address."-".$city."-".$state."-".$zip."-".$note."\n";
}
print $record;
|
Here is a copy of the pdb2abook script.
