Managing Personal Information - Summary of PIM Fields

Print-friendly Version

Mobile handsets such as cellphones typically have an address book to keep track of people we like to stay in touch with, a calendar to keep track of important events, and a to-do list to keep track of items we don't want to forget. This type of personal information is one of the most important functions found in a handset, just second to voice. You can use the PIM API for Java ME to enable your mobile Java applications to read and write to/from the locally stored personal information databases. You can even write synchronizers to keep your handset PIM data in-sync with remote PIM data stores. This technical tip summaries the PIM API fields.

The PIM API for Java ME supports fields and attributes that map to Internet Mail Consortium Personal Data Interchange vCard 2.1, vCard 3.0 and vCalendar 1.0.

The JSR 75 provides a comprehensive set of tables that summarizes the fields and attributes, and how the map to vCard 2.1, vCard 3.0 (RFC 2425 and RFC 2426) and vCalendar 1.0. The following tables come from the JSR 75 specification:

Contact Field and Attributes	vCard 2.1 Property Name/Property Parameters	vCard 3.0 Type Property Name/Property Parameters
ADDR	ADR	ADR
ADDR_COUNTRY	7th address component in the semi-colon separated string type value in ADR	7th address component in the semi-colon separated string type value in ADR
ADDR_EXTRA	2nd address component in the semi-colon separated string type value in ADR	2nd address component in the semi-colon separated string type value in ADR
ADDR_LOCALITY	4th address component in the semi-colon separated string type value in ADR	4th address component in the semi-colon separated string type value in ADR
ADDR_POBOX	1st address component in the semi-colon separated string type value in ADR	1st address component in the semi-colon separated string type value in ADR
ADDR_POSTALCODE	6th address component in the semi-colon separated string type value in ADR	6th address component in the semi-colon separated string type value in ADR
ADDR_REGION	5th address component in the semi-colon separated string type value in ADR	5th address component in the semi-colon separated string type value in ADR
ADDR_STREET	3rd address component in the semi-colon separated string type value in ADR	3rd address component in the semi-colon separated string type value in ADR
BIRTHDAY	BDAY	BDAY
CLASS	Implementation specific mapping	CLASS
EMAIL	EMAIL/INTERNET	EMAIL/INTERNET
FORMATTED_ADDR	LABEL	LABEL
FORMATTED_NAME	FN	FN
NAME	N	N
NAME_FAMILY	1st name component in the semi-colon separated string type value in N	1st name component in the semi-colon separated string type value in N
NAME_GIVEN	2nd name component in the semi-colon separated string type value in N	2nd name component in the semi-colon separated string type value in N
NAME_OTHER	3rd name component in the semi-colon separated string type value in N	3rd name component in the semi-colon separated string type value in N
NAME_PREFIX	4th name component in the semi-colon separated string type value in N	4th name component in the semi-colon separated string type value in N
NAME_SUFFIX	5th name component in the semi-colon separated string type value in N	5th name component in the semi-colon separated string type value in N
NICKNAME	NICKNAME	NICKNAME
NOTE	NOTE	NOTE
ORG	ORG	ORG
PHOTO	PHOTO (inline specification of photo)	PHOTO (inline specification of photo)
PHOTO_URL	PHOTO/VALUE=URL	PHOTO/VALUE=URL
PUBLIC_KEY	KEY (inline binary specification)	KEY
PUBLIC_KEY_STRING	KEY (default text string)	KEY
REVISION	REV	REV
TEL	TEL/VOICE	TEL/VOICE
TITLE	TITLE	TITLE
UID	UID	UID
URL	URL	URL
ATTR_ASST	Implementation specific mapping	Implementation specific mapping
ATTR_AUTO	CAR property parameter	CAR property parameter
ATTR_FAX	FAX property parameter	FAX property parameter
ATTR_HOME	HOME property parameter	HOME property parameter
ATTR_MOBILE	CELL property parameter	CELL property parameter
ATTR_OTHER	Implementation specific mapping	Implementation specific mapping
ATTR_PAGER	PAGER property parameter	PAGER property parameter
ATTR_PREFERRED	PREF property parameter	PREF property parameter
ATTR_SMS	MSG property parameter	MSG property parameter
ATTR_WORK	WORK property parameter	WORK property parameter
ATTR_NONE	no mapping	no mapping

Event Field	vCalendar 1.0 Property Name/Property Parameters
ALARM	DALARM/DATE-TIME (implementations may also additionally set AALARM in concert with this property)
CLASS	CLASS
END	DTEND
LOCATION	LOCATION
NOTE	DESCRIPTION
REVISION	LAST-MODIFIED
START	DTSTART
SUMMARY	SUMMARY
UID	UID

ToDo Field	vCalendar 1.0 Property Name/Property Parameters
CLASS	CLASS
COMPLETION_DATE	COMPLETED
COMPLETED	COMPLETED (presence of field indicates completed is true)
DUE	DUE
NOTE	DESCRIPTION
PRIORITY	PRIORITY
REVISION	LAST-MODIFIED
SUMMARY	SUMMARY
UID	UID

• PDA Optional Packages for the J2ME Platform
• Sun Java Wireless Toolkit
• Internet Mail Consortium Personal Data Interchange vCard and vCalendar web site

Many thanks to Kevin Lym, Vasily Isaenko, and Alexander.Glasman for all their feedback and helping improve this article.

C. Enrique Ortiz is a mobile technologist, software architect and developer, and a writer and blogger. He has been author or co-author of many publications, and is an active participant in the Java mobility community and in various Java ME Expert Groups. Enrique holds a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Puerto Rico and has more than 17 years of software engineering, product development, and management experience.