Make new contact from website on smartphones

Question

I would like to create a button my website, that when clicked from a smartphone, it would allow the user to import my contact information.

It appears you can do this with vcard, but that would required the smartphone users to install additional software to make it work.

Is there something similar to the "tel:" href-tag that can trigger the data to be imported into the contacts for the phone?

I am not sure if this is a good idea.... by the sound of it, that is equivalent to "dial-a-number bombing" where the number is a premium number in which the end-user could end up with a expensive phone bill... just saying; take into account of the recent USSD exploit, I would decline if that's the case, prompting me to dial a so-and-so number... no thanks! — t0mm13b, Oct 06 '12 at 01:30
How can those be compared? In my view, the OP wants to make a button saying "Add my contact information", which in turn creates a contact on the phone. Nothing more, nothing less. — Emil, Oct 06 '12 at 10:19

score 0 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:12

Take a look at this, it uses a VCalendar-approach to acheve the contact-storing from a web-page.

Full code example quoted here:

<?php
# Send correct headers      
header("Content-type: text/x-vcalendar; charset=utf-8"); 
# Alternatively: application/octet-stream
# Depending on the desired browser behaviour
# Be sure to test thoroughly cross-browser

header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=\"iphonecontact.ics\";");
# Output file contents - simple version
#echo file_get_contents("iphonecontact.ics");

# Generate file contents - advanced version
# BEGIN:VCALENDAR
# VERSION:2.0
# BEGIN:VEVENT
# DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20120617T090000
# DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20120617T100000
# SUMMARY:iPhone Contact
# DTSTAMP:20120617T080516Z
# ATTACH;VALUE=BINARY;ENCODING=BASE64;FMTTYPE=text/directory;
#  X-APPLE-FILENAME=iphonecontact.vcf:
#  QkVHSU46VkNBUkQNClZFUlNJT046My4wDQpOOkNvbnRhY3Q7aVBob25lOzs7DQpGTjppUGhvbm
#  UgQ29udGFjdA0KRU1BSUw7VFlQRT1JTlRFUk5FVDtUWVBFPVdPUks6aXBob25lQHRoZXNpbGlj
#  b25nbG9iZS5jb20NClRFTDtUWVBFPUNFTEw7VFlQRT1WT0lDRTtUWVBFPXByZWY6KzQ0MTIzND
#  U2Nzg5MA0KRU5EOlZDQVJE
# END:VEVENT
# END:VCALENDAR

echo "BEGIN:VCALENDAR\n";
echo "VERSION:2.0\n";
echo "BEGIN:VEVENT\n";
echo "SUMMARY:Click attached contact below to save to your contacts\n";
$dtstart = date("Ymd")."T".date("Hi")."00";
echo "DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:".$dtstart."\n";
$dtend = date("Ymd")."T".date("Hi")."01";
echo "DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:".$dtend."\n";
echo "DTSTAMP:".$dtstart."Z\n";
echo "ATTACH;VALUE=BINARY;ENCODING=BASE64;FMTTYPE=text/directory;\n";
echo " X-APPLE-FILENAME=iphonecontact.vcf:\n";
$vcard = file_get_contents("iphonecontact.vcf");        # read the file into memory
$b64vcard = base64_encode($vcard);                      # base64 encode it so that it can be used as an attachemnt to the "dummy" calendar appointment
$b64mline = chunk_split($b64vcard,74,"\n");             # chunk the single long line of b64 text in accordance with RFC2045 (and the exact line length determined from the original .ics file exported from Apple calendar
$b64final = preg_replace('/(.+)/', ' $1', $b64mline);   # need to indent all the lines by 1 space for the iphone (yes really?!!)
echo $b64final;                                         # output the correctly formatted encoded text
echo "END:VEVENT\n";
echo "END:VCALENDAR\n";
?>

(Original answer by Steve Grobe - iPhone: how to get safari to recognize a vcard? )

Make new contact from website on smartphones

1 Answers1