As mentioned yesterday, I’m now exporting all of the entries in my OS X Address Book into Subversion. In order to do this, I needed to hack up a conversion tool. Since I have it working for me, I figured I’d share it. So, I’d like to announce ab2vcard version 1.0. You can download an OS X installer package plus the source.

The whole thing is pretty trivial to use. Just run /usr/local/bin/ab2vcard directory, and it’ll create a vCard for everyone in your Address Book in the directory directory. If you add the -d flag, then it’ll erase files that aren’t currently in your address book. If you add the -s flag, then it’ll try to check changes into Subversion. The README that’s included gives more detail, as does the manpage.

It’s written in Objective C and derived from ‘contacts’ by Shane Celis. Since I now have a whopping 4 hours of experience with Objective C, don’t expect the code to be spotless, but it shouldn’t be too bad. Objective C is a surprisingly easy language, if you already know C and are somewhat familiar with other Smalltalk-influenced languages. The hard part is getting the hang of all of the framework code, but Apple’s documentation helped with that.

Let me know if you find any bugs, or if you find this useful for anything.