Ross Burtonhttp://www.burtonini.com/blogA potted account of Ross' lifeen60Ross BurtonGenerating Random vCardscomputers/random-vcards-2007-06-06-15-00http://www.burtonini.com/blog/computers/random-vcards-2007-06-06-15-00Again I found myself wanting a pile of realistic vCards to test with, and decided to write a decent and ... Again I found myself wanting a pile of realistic vCards to test with, and decided to write a decent and extendable solution for once (instead of the hilarity of this). A while ago I discovered Barnum, which can generate pseudo-realistic data by containing large data sets of names, street addresses, zip codes and credit card numbers. I extended it a little, adding support for creating an email address from a given name (it looks weird when the contact's name is John Smith but the email is john.doe@bar.com) and generating birth dates, then wrote a tiny script to write valid vCards. Et voilà: 

$ ./gen_vcard.py 
BEGIN:VCARD
VERSION:3.0
UID:barnum-1107705517
FN:Caleb Barone
N:Barone;Caleb;;;
BDAY:1955-05-06
EMAIL;TYPE=WORK:cbarone@blanditvelit.eu
X-JABBER;TYPE=HOME:cbarone@eratdolore.eu
ADR;TYPE=HOME:;;8270 Kahlden Lane;Thompson;CT;06277;USA
END:VCARD

If this is useful to anyone else, you'll want Barnum, my patched gen_data.py, and gen_vcard.py.

NP: More Than Music, Murphin

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