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How to use

How do you use it?

VisualCard provides two types of versit types:

  • vCard 2.1, 3.0, 4.0, and 5.0

  • vCalendar 1.0 and 2.0

There are common classes that work on both vCard and vCalendar. They're found in VisualCard.Common. There's no need to install it manually, as it's automatically installed as a transitive dependency.

vCard 2.1 to 5.0

Just use the CardTools class found in the VisualCard namespace that contains all the necessayr tools to get a list of cards from either a vCard file, a stream, or a string representation:

  • GetCardsFromString(string)

  • GetCards(string)

  • GetCards(StreamReader)

These functions return the list of cards from multiple contacts that may be detected by the vCard parser. When parsing is done, it returns an array of Card instances that hold information about the contact. You can consult the supported parts in the below page:

Card Parts

VisualCard officially supports the vCard 5.0 specification, which can be found here.

To save contacts, call the SaveTo() function on a Card instance that holds information about a contact you want to save. Currently, it allows you to specify the method of saving:

  • SaveTo(): Saves this contact to a file path

  • SaveToString(): Saves this contact to a string representation

    • You can pass true to this function if you want to validate the card prior to saving

On VCard 4.0 and 5.0, ALTID is supported on all the compatible types. You can also group the properties by appending a group name and a dot before the actual property.

vCalendar 1.0 and 2.0

Additionally, VisualCard can parse calendars, but only after you've installed a separate library, called VisualCard.Calendar, that is responsible for handling calendars that are built upon the following vCalendar versions:

  • vCalendar 1.0

  • vCalendar 2.0

To parse calendars, you can use the CalendarTools class that contains the following functions:

  • GetCalendarsFromString(string)

  • GetCalendars(string)

  • GetCalendars(StreamReader)

These functions return the list of cards from multiple contacts that may be detected by the vCard parser. When parsing is done, it returns an array of Card instances that hold information about the contact. You can consult the supported parts in the below page:

Calendar Parts

Just like vCards, you can also save calendars by calling the SaveTo() function on a Calendar instance that holds information about a calendar you want to save. Currently, it allows you to specify the method of saving:

  • SaveTo(): Saves this calemdar to a file path

  • SaveToString(): Saves this calendar to a string representation

    • You can pass true to this function if you want to validate the card prior to saving

You can group the properties by appending a group name and a dot before the actual property.

Clipboard support

If you're developing a clipboard manager, you may want to make it detect that it's a vCard or a vCalendar instance using the clipboard object identifier using the FPI constant variable in either CardTools or CalendarTools.

Diagnostics

You can enable logging for VisualCard by setting the EnableLogging property to true and by optionally providing the logging provider using the AbstractLogger property. To find out more about the internal workings of this feature, consult the below page:

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