My Contacts Plugin

[TimmyT]

A couple of months ago, I started to work on an address book plugin for MediaPortal. My goal was to easily import a variety of existing address books (MS Outlook, Thunderbird and so on) and display the addresses in MediaPortal. I am a happy Plaxo user for some years now and when I found out that Plaxo offers an API, I decided to create a MediaPortal plugin that synchronizes with a Plaxo account.

For those of you who have no clou what Plaxo is (I suppose there are some), Plaxo is a webservice that allows you to share data between different application and services, such as Microsoft Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird, Apple Address Book and many more. Your information are mirrored on a Plaxo server and all your application can access these information there. For example, I use Outlook at my office and at home. Thanks to Plaxo, I always have my contacts, my tasks and my notes synchronized between the two computers.

Now back to my plugin... Obviously, you need the get a Plaxo account. Check out the Plaxo website (Plaxo) to find out if your favorite PIM application is supported. If yes, great! You just need to download the according tool and sync! Minutes later, all your infos are available in your Plaxo account. If your favorite PIM is not supported - bad luck :-( You could still use my plugin but you'd have to enter all your addresses through the webfrontend of plaxo.

Now when you do have all your contacts in your Plaxo account, you're ready to start with this plugin. Simply donwload and install the plugin and go to configuration to set up your account.

One more thing to say. Even though I talk about "synchronisation", it's actually just a one-way process. Everytime a sync is performed, the local database will be deleted and all your contacts will be reimported. And for now, this process is done manually through the configuration form only. Maybe in future, this procedure can be triggered from within the mediaportal gui or do even automatic syncs, but hey, this is just the first release... leave me some room for improvement here ;-)


Download
- MyContacts_0.2.0.zip (2008-03-14)

Sourcecode
- MyContacts sources on SVN

Intallation
- Just unpack the zip file and copy the folders "skin" and "plugins" to your MediaPortal root directoy (c:\program files\team mediaportal\mediaportal)
- Start MediaPortal configuration and activate the plugin
- Enter the configuration for this plugin (details see below)

Note: this plugin is NOT compatible with MediaPortal v1.0.0.x yet!

Configuration
In the configuration form, enter your Plaxo username (email-address) and your password. Press save and hit the sync button. Depending on the number of contacts, this process takes a while, sometimes up to a minute, so be patient ;-). You can also change the name of the plugin.

After a successful sync, you can browse your contacts from within the configuration form. Simple hit the "browse contacts" button and a very rudimental form shows your contacts. You can delete some contacts if you wish to (delete is just local, it won't affect your contacts at Plaxo). Also you can see the field names of your contact details. For example, the "Mobile Phone" field in outlook is available in the "BusinessMobilePhone" field in Plaxo. You'll probably need the field names if you personalize your views (see below).


Please report any errors or suggestions in this post. I hope you enjoy this little plugin.

TimmyT



More information available here

[piranha]

On your screenshot my-contacts-plugin-contacts.png, are you planning to display the image of the contact itself?
Most of my contacts have image assigned, will it be visible anywhere?

[TimmyT]

Hi piranha

That was actually the plan... unfortunately, when you sync your outlook (or any other PIM) with Plaxo, the images don't find their way into Plaxo. But if your contact is a Plaxo Member himself (and has uploaded his picture), then this picture will be shown.

I hope that Plaxo will allow this feature somewhen in the future... until then, only Plaxo members will be shown with photo!

Cheers,
TimmyT

[cubii]

Looks nice!

I was searching for something like this, but not only to view my contacts but also to call them directly via voip.
There is a programm called phoner that can use Hyperlinks like: "phoner://0023020302382" .

I made a html file with some of my contacts and can now call them via the web-plugin for MP.

Could it be possible to integrate that into your plugin?

I know you only want to view your contacts, but a voip plugin is missing for MP and your plugin looks like it could be used for it.

Anyway thanks for your work

[TimmyT]

Hi cubii

it sounds like a great idea - unfortunately i don't have an isdn adapter so i won't be able to test it. but why don't you write me a mail with the details (how exactly this links should look like, format of the phone number etc.) and i'll think of a way to integrate it.

Cheers,
TimmyT

[cubii]

hi
i`ll write you an email to the adress i`ve found under "contact" on your homepage .

[Zarra]

hi TimmyT
i m writing my first PlugIN and i have somequestion please if you give me a tip how you have release that:
you have one .dll and you controll 2 Skin (mycontacts.xml and mycontactsdetail.xml) how do you do that. i try all the time in my PlugIn but the second skin dont show reaction. please if you send me a demoo i wanna very thankfull.
Thanksss

[TimmyT]

Hi Zarra
You can browse my source files in the svn repository... check cout this link:

https://mp-plugins.svn.sourceforge.n...ns/MyContacts/

to answer your question, i have two different windows (GUIWindow) where each of them uses a different skin xml. look at my classes MyContacts.cs and MyContactsDetail.cs to see how i did that.

Good luck with your first plugin
TimmyT

[cubii]

Hi TimmyT

i took a look into the svn thing and found a folder called VOIP with Phoner.cs.

Does it mean you are trying to implement voip?

If there is a test version, i would try it...

[Zarra]

thanks TimmyT, it work yet with the two Skin (XML) ; )
thanks again