Re: [dev] Cataloging of contacts

From: Jean Louis <bugs_AT_gnu.support>
Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2016 22:03:07 +0200

It's good to start tracking people. I've made this decision long time
ago, today I have 64000+ contacts in the PostgreSQL database, and
making money on it. It is certainly not a suckless approach.

As for simple, approach, if you are using directories for contacts,
why not use simply files for phones, or even directories for phones,
emails, addresses. That way you could have multiple phones in ./phone
directory as example.

Any interface, like web, some GUI or console could have access to such
file system database.

CRM on my side is process of using emails. All emails of customers are
in the directories, like ./Maildir/somebody_AT_example.com (using mutt).

If I wish to see all emails of somebody:

1) in console: emailsof somebody_AT_example.com runs mutt like mutt -f
~/Maildir/somebody_AT_example.com -- this way I can see all emails
relating to the contact

2) I was using ~/Maildir/somebody_AT_example.com/Attachments directory,
where all belonging files were inside. It is possible to connect
Maildir directory to other data of the contact, but it is a limited
approach, as people have multiple emails, but unique IDs in some
database.

3) I have made directories in special location, that is taking unique
IDs from PostgreSQL database, like ./By-IDs and ./By-Name, so the ID
directories contain files of contacts, like licenses, documents,
etc. sorted. And By-Name contain symlinks to the IDs. That way I am
sorting belonging files to each other. It is possible to symlink
Maildirs, belonging to contact into such directories.

4) While mostly using Mutt, I made some shortcuts, to quickly open all
emails of contact, or to add contact to a group, or to subscribe it to
some mailing list in a second, add a skill to contact, mark the
contact in the database or assign TODO with a single click (taking
subject and contact), or just by using Esc-o to open the file of the
contact in a browser, reviewing his/her picture or image, phones,
notes, etc. I wish to make it all in console in future.

I know it is not as suckless approach, it is working well on my side.

Jean Louis

On Wed, Nov 09, 2016 at 07:36:22PM +0000, Thomas Levine wrote:
> I want to keep track of some information about people, and I have an
> idea of what I want the user interface to be like. Perhaps is there
> already something close to what I want?
>
> I want to record the following information about each contact.
>
> * Name
> * Phone number
> * Email address
> * Postal address
>
> I want each contact to have its own file. I will put all of the
> contacts' files in a directory tree. I can look up contacts by filename
> or with a search. (grep will probably be fine.) The software would do
> the following.
>
> * Check that I have formatted the contacts' files properly.
> * Convert into formats for other programs (my email client, notably)
>
> If I don't get any other ideas, I will probably write something that
> uses vCard as the format. vCard is nice because search engines (like
> recoll) will likely recognize it. The main thing I'm wondering is
> whether there is a nicer format that vCard.
>
Received on Wed Nov 09 2016 - 21:03:07 CET