syncgcontacts

syncgcontacts

Synchronize your N9 phonebook 

with multiple gmail accounts

Do you love your N9, but you feel it is kinda limited in the contact management functionalities? Do you think just one account for contacts is limiting you? And, as gmail user, do you feel that contact groups are extremely practical to organize your contacts (for example to choose which contacts should go to the phone and which, instead, are simply email contacts and you dont want to ever have them on the phone), but there's no way to map them to the N9?

With syncgcontacts you can finally overcome these limitations.

Syncgcontacts is an application that uses the gdata-api to fetch contacts from one (or more) GMail accounts, and save them to your N9.

Syncgcontacts can also filter the fetched contacts  by groups.

Get it from Nokia Store

Updates
0.3.0 -- Supports most of the contact fields, the Skype IM field (used only when contacts get merged), and google accounts with a custom email address. Performance optimization and bugfixes. New Icon.

DISCLAIMER:

Syncgcontacts does not work together with N9 built-in MfE functionality. Before you use syncgcontacts, you must disable any contact synchronization account in your phone, such as MfE accounts for contacts. Otherwise you may end up messing your contacts on the gmail account (remote side)!

Also, this application has been tested quite extensively, and has worked well for me, but it is provided without any explicit warranty that it will work, and that it wont mess up your phone.

Finally, this is an application in its very early stage, it can be still quite cumbersome to use at times, and may crash due to various reasons (like connection going off).

If it is used properly, it wont do any irreversible damage (in the worst case you just refresh your contacts from the server), but i take no responsibility for any improper use of this tool

How does it work

Syncgcontacts (currently) simply fetches contacts from one or more gmail accounts, filters them according to user specifications, and finally save them on the phone.

It does not go both ways (yet). This means that, for the moment, you will have to enter new contacts on gmail in some other way, for example by using the gmail.com web frontend. This, however, also means that syncgcontacts wont be able in any way to mess up the contacts on your gmail account

Usage

Usage: /opt/syncgcontacts/bin/syncgcontacts [options]

Options:
  -h, --help            shows this message and exits
  -p, --print           Prints contacts on the phone. Other options specified
                        together with this one will have no effect
  -a ACCOUNTS, --accounts=ACCOUNTS
                        list of accounts to download (comma separated). Only
                        accounts which are configured will be considered
  -d, --delete          Erases all the contacts in the device. Can be used
                        together with -a to erase everything before
                        downloading.  *WARNING* this option will erase all the
                        contacts currently present in your device!
  -n NEWACCOUNT, --newaccount=NEWACCOUNT
                        Configures a new gmail account. Use colon to separate
                        username and password  Specifying other options
                        together will have no effect. The account configured
                        using this option will be usable afterward with -a. To
                        update the password for an already configured account,
                        simply reconfigure it with the new password. Example:
                        -n john.doe:secretpassword .

  Debug Options:
    -P, --printall      Prints all the contacts in the phone, including those
                        from telepathy or other sources
    -D, --deleteall     Deletes all the contacts in the phone, including those
                        from telepathy or other sources

In action

First, we configure our gmail account,  "john.doe@gmail.com" in syncgcontacts,  by running:

/opt/syncgcontacts/bin/syncgcontacts -n john.doe:password     

Note that the username in the commandline above does not contain the @gmail.com suffix.

At this point, to download all the contacts from the gmail account john.doe@gmail.com into our phone, we simply have to run 

/opt/syncgcontacts/bin/syncgcontacts -a john.doe   

To filter by contact groups, syncgcontacts supports the following syntax:

 -a account+includedgroup1+...+includedgroupN-excludedgroup1-...-excludedgroupN

This tells syncgcontacts to add only those contacts that belong to ALL the groups prefixed with + , but which do not belong to ANY of the groups prefixed with -.

Example:

/opt/syncgcontacts/bin/syncgcontacts -a john.doe+Home+Friends-LosAngeles-Seattle

this commands will add only those contacts that belongs to both Home and Friends, but which do not belong neither to LosAngeles, nor to Seattle

Multiple accounts

Syncgcontacts supports multiple (configured) accounts, and let you separate them in the command line by using a comma. So, if you want to sync two accounts, "john.doe" and "john.doe.work", you can do something like:

/opt/syncgcontacts/bin/syncgcontacts -a john.doe+Home+Friends-LosAngeles-Seattle,john.doe.work+IBM+Apple+SanFrancisco-Microsoft

Updating contacts

Syncgcontacts keeps track of which accounts have been already downloaded.

So running the two command lines above in sequence will cause the second one to fetch and add only contacts for the account "john.doe.work".

Likewise, running the two command line above in inverted order will cause first one to download nothing, but only remove the contacts belonging to john.doe.work.

Unfortunately syncgcontacts do not detect for different group specifications, meaning that using it with the same account a second time, but with a different group specification, will have no effect.

However, syncgcontacts has a -d (--delete) option, that erases all the contacts from the phone prior to syncing. This is an option that has to be used with care, but is useful when something went wrong before, and we want a fresh copy of our contacts into the phone, or when we have a different group specification for an account already downloaded.

In such cases we can issue something like:

/opt/syncgcontacts/bin/syncgcontacts -a john.doe+Home+Friends+Seattle-LosAngeles  -d

BE CAREFUL, and before using this option, or even syncgcontacts for the first time, make sure that you have all your contacts on gmail already. if you delete contacts you dont have on the cloud, no one will be able to bring them back :)

Future Work

• two-way synchronization: ability to push to gmail contacts added on the phone and not present on the server
• GUI
• support for other providers 

Screen Shots

Comments and Support

If you have suggestions for improvements, constructive criticism, or you simply need help, you can contact me at THIS address, or maybe just write in the comment section below.
If you also feel that this tool eased your digital life incredibly, you may also consider to donate a few money to the project