Fetch Outlook contacts from php or using LAMP architecture

Question

I have LAMP architecture at my server and i want to import contacts from outlook into my web app. Also I want generic solution that will run on any browser not just IE. Is this possible or not? if yes then please let me know.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

The Outlook desktop client will allow you to export your contacts as a .csv file. You can write a script to import that file and import it using PHP.

If you use the PHP function fgetcsv you can read in the CSV file and parse it as rows of arrays, then push that into what ever storage mechanism you are using on your webapp.

It's also possible to interact with windows.live.com to get contacts from the Outlook live service, using this Outlook.com API. I've had success interfacing with that using the PHP Exchange Web Services library