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<p>You may already be aware that bits and pieces of CardDAV support
have landed in various versions of Thunderbird. This is an
appropriate point for me to update you on what Thunderbird can and
can't do with regards to CardDAV.<b><br>
</b></p>
<p><i>Please note that CardDAV support is <b>NOT</b> considered
ready for general use.</i><br>
<b></b></p>
<p><b>Status of ESR, Thunderbird 78:</b></p>
<p>ESR shipped with the bulk of the pieces in place. Unfortunately
there wasn't time to complete the work, and so we're not
publicising CardDAV as a feature of 78.</p>
<p>Currently on ESR, CardDAV can connect to a server and download
your contacts, and updates you make to contacts will be sent to
the server, but there are no synchronisation abilities. The UI to
create a CardDAV address book (File – New – CardDAV Address Book
in the Address Book window) is hidden behind the preference <font
face="monospace"> mail.addr_book.carddav.enabled</font>.</p>
<p><b>Status of Beta, Thunderbird 81:</b></p>
<p>CardDAV has the ability to do periodic and on-demand
synchronisation with the server. You can right click on an address
book in the UI and choose synchronise. Automatic synchronisation
happens shortly after Thunderbird starts, and every 30 minutes
after that, but there's no control it. The preference still
exists.</p>
<p>If you've been trying out earlier versions of the Thunderbird
CardDAV implementation, you should remove any directories you
created and recreate them. The set-up process now does some things
it didn't previously do.<br>
</p>
<p><b>Plan for Daily, Thunderbird 82:</b></p>
<p>The final pieces of the initial implementation of CardDAV are in
review and are going to land any day now. When they do I'll
consider this phase complete and remove the preference.</p>
<p><b>What's been done so far:</b></p>
<p>The origins of Thunderbird's address book system date back to the
1990s and they're deeply entwined with the rest of the program.
They are also not very compatible with many of the features of the
vCard format, which is used for the exchange of information
between client and server.</p>
<p>A lot of work has gone into modernising Thunderbird's support for
vCard. What existed before was the absolute minimum of read/write
capabilities for vCard 2.1. vCard 2.1 has since been superseded by
vCard 3.0 and 4.0. I have completely replaced Thunderbird's vCard
implementation with that of <a
href="https://github.com/mozilla-comm/ical.js/">ical.js</a>,
which we ship as part of the Thunderbird calendar. Thunderbird can
now read and write vCards in versions 3.0 and 4.0, and still
(through a variety of hacks) read vCard 2.1.</p>
<p>To translate vCards into objects the rest of Thunderbird
understands (<font face="monospace">nsIAbCard</font>), without
completely rewriting everything, I've created utility functions
that translate between the two formats. Not all vCard data can be
represented in the nsIAbCard format, so I've tried hard to ensure
that Thunderbird can use the most relevant information, and that
information doesn't get lost when converting back to vCard. (And
yes, for those of you who have read the CardDAV documentation, we
do store the original vCard and only modify it as necessary.)</p>
<p>Finally we took our base address book storage, added the CardDAV
protocol to it, and this is where we are today.</p>
<p><i>At this point I'd like to thank the various people who have
provided access to different types of servers for testing.
That's been very helpful. Thank you.</i></p>
<p><b>Can I do all of the things CardDAV is capable of, like mark an
email address as "home" or "work"?</b></p>
<p>No. Not only is our current format incapable of handling this
information, but there is no user interface to do it with. For all
intents and purposes, at this stage, a CardDAV address book
behaves just like a normal Thunderbird address book, except that
changes are relayed to a remote server and updates are retrieved
from the server.</p>
<p><b>Will I be able to do these things in the future?</b></p>
<p>Yes. That's the intention anyway, but I haven't got a crystal
ball so can't see what the future holds.</p>
<p>By next year's ESR release, we should have a new user interface
for the address book. This should be able to do many of the useful
things you can do in other address book software, but it will
require a lot more work in the background.</p>
<p><b>Can I use this to connect to my Google contacts?</b></p>
<p>Not at this stage. As per usual, Google have to be different, and
they use OAuth instead of standard HTTP authorisation. The code is
written, but we're waiting on Google to allow us to ask you for
permission to access your contacts.</p>
<p><b>How does this affect WebExtensions?</b></p>
<p>To WebExtensions, a CardDAV address book appears the same as a
regular address book, and no modifications are necessary at this
point. In the future there may be some additional API functions
available, and we'll try to do this in a backwards-compatible way.</p>
<b>Where do I report bugs?</b><br>
<p> Please use the <a
href="https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=MailNews+Core&component=Address+Book">Mailnews
Core – Address Book</a> component to report bugs, unless the bug
is in the UI, in which case use <a
href="https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=Thunderbird&component=Address+Book">Thunderbird
– Address Book</a>. Please provide as much information as you
can, including the version of Thunderbird you see the problem in,
any applicable error messages, and if it's relevant, the server
software you're connecting to.</p>
<p>The Network Inspector tool (Tools – Developer Tools – Developer
Toolbox, then choose Network) is very useful for debugging
problems. If the server reports an error message and Thunderbird
fails to handle it appropriately, please file a bug.</p>
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