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xmlabsync - Mac OS X Address Book Synchronization

Copyright (c) 2012 Will Roberts <wildwilhelm@gmail.com>.

Licensed under the MIT License (see source file xmlabsync.m for details).

Synchronizes the Mac OS X Address Book to and from an XML-based format.

This program is intended to help with synchronizing the system Address Book between computers, and with tracking changes to the Address Book by storing its contents in a version control system (I use Git).

The process would look roughly like this:

# export the system Address Book to XML
xmlabsync -w abook.xml
git commit -m "Autocommit Address Book" abook.xml
git fetch
# merge local abook.xml with remote abook.xml
git merge origin/upstream
git push
# integrate updated information from the XML to the system Address Book
xmlabsync -r abook.xml

This should work for Mac OS X 10.4 and better.

Syntax

xmlabsync Version 1.0
Mac OS X Address Book Synchronization
Copyright (c) 2012 Will Roberts

This is a utility to export the Mac OS X Address Book as an XML file,
or to read an XML file in, modifying the Address Book.

Syntax:

   xmlabsync -w OUTFILE.XML
   xmlabsync [--no-update] [--no-delete] -r INFILE.XML
   xmlabsync --replace INFILE.XML
   xmlabsync --delete

xmlabsync -w dumps the Address Book to the named file (or standard output
if filename is "-").

xmlabsync -r reads an XML file (or standard input if filename is "-"),
creating, modifying, and deleting entries in the Address Book to
mirror the data read.  If --no-update is specified, the tool will not
modify any existing entries.  If --no-delete is specified, the tool
will not delete any existing entries.

xmlabsync --replace deletes the local address book and replaces its
contents with the entries loaded from the given XML file.  USE WITH
CAUTION.

xmlabsync --delete deletes the local address book.  USE WITH CAUTION.

Known Issues

  • If the user sets the image data for a person record using the Address Book.app application, xmlabsync will not be able to delete the image.
  • No localization.
  • xmlabsync could try harder to preserve UUID information when replace-ing the Address Book. My thinking is that the average user won't replace their Address Book all that often, so this is OK.
  • xmlabsync --replace with big address books makes AddressBookSync unhappy, and it can sometimes take a few tries to get the Address Book to import completely.

Requirements

  • Mac OS X 10.4 or later.
  • CMake 2.6 or later.
  • Apple Developer Tools
    • Under 10.7+, you may also need to install the Command Line Tools (in XCode's Preferences Window, Downloads Tab > Components)

Building

  1. Check out the source from GitHub:

    git checkout git://github.com/wroberts/xmlabsync.git

  2. Build

    xmlabsync uses CMake for building. This implies a two-stage process for building. In the first stage, CMake generates an XCode project. In the second, XCode is used to build the binary.

    The commands for doing this are stored in the Makefile for easy reference. From the command line, in the xmlabsync top-level directory:

    mkdir -p build
cd build
cmake -G Xcode ../src
xcodebuild

    This will build the binary into the subdirectory build/Debug. The build system as presented above keeps the source tree (in src) and the build products (under build) separate.

Source: README.rst, updated 2013-03-19