Parsing multiple vCards with Python

Question

I've got a vcf file from Google's contacts export feature. It was encoded with UTF-8, but my WinMobile telephone expects win1251 characters to import into contactbook. I recoded it into win1251 and did try to parse the file using vObject library. What I got as a result was a mix of fields some of which were correctly encoded into Unicode, and some were replaced by "?????" text. For example I include a prettyPrint of such a contact:

 VCARD
    TEL: +7812000000
    params for  TEL:
       aKey TYPE [u'CELL']
    TEL: +7921000000
    params for  TEL:
       aKey TYPE [u'HOME']
    URL: http\://www.diamantstroy.spb.ru
    X-ABLABEL: _$!<HomePage>!$_
    N:  Alexei  ??????? 
    VERSION: 3.0
    ORG: [u'\u041e\u041e\u041e \u0414\u0438\u0430\u043c\u0430\u043d\u0442-\u0421\u0442\u0440\u043e\u0439-\u0421\u0435\u0440\u0432\u0438\u0441']
    FN: Alexei ???????

What I cannot find is a place in the source-code where I should apply some sort of encode()/decode() patch to fit my needs. Could someone help me?

Answer 1

Make sure your input is unicode when you pass it to readOne (or whatever parsing function you are using). If you want to go back to Windows-1251 coding, after you parse the vcard use result.encode('cp1251') or codecs.open(filename, 'w', 'cp1251').write(result).

It is a little confusing what flow you are going thru. Are you doing phone -> google -> code, or since you use the word expects, are you doing google -> code -> phone?

This answer may help with conversions.