RFC draft-ietf-calext-jscontact-profiles-00 | JSContact Profiles | April 2025 |
Stepanek & Loffredo | Expires 17 October 2025 | [Page] |
This document defines JSContact profiles, a named subsets of JSContact elements that are supported in context of a contact data exchange protocol or other use case. It aims to facilitate using JSContact in contexts where supporting all of JSContact semantics is not appropriate.¶
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The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in BCP 14 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all capitals, as shown here.¶
The ABNF definitions in this document use the notations of [RFC5234]. ABNF rules not defined in this document are defined in either [RFC5234] (such as the ABNF for CRLF, WSP, DQUOTE, VCHAR, ALPHA, and DIGIT) or [RFC6350].¶
The JSContact [RFC9553] contact card data model and format is designed for use in address book applications and directory services. Intended as an alternative to the prevalent vCard [RFC6350] data format, it covers vCard core semantics and extensions, and provides a rich model for personal names, postal addresses and localization. All JSContact elements are relevant for some contact card use case and, similar to vCard, implementations are expected to support these elements when exchanging contact card information using protocols such as CardDAV [RFC6352] and JMAP for Contacts [RFC9610].¶
In contrast, other protocols and internet standards might require to exchange some contact card information, but not need all of what JSContact provides. Section 1.7.4 of [RFC9553] outlines how JSContact implementations may ignore unknown JSContact elements, but this only applies to future extensions of [RFC9553]; they are still expected to implement all elements of the core specification. Also, the extensibility of JSContact and the requirement to preserve arbitrary contact elements might not be adequate for some protocols.¶
To make use of JSContact under these circumstances, this document defines a new IANA registry for JSContact that allows to register named subsets of JSContact elements. These subsets are referred to as "JSContact profiles" and are meant to bring the following benefits:¶
This document is organized as follows: Section 3 defines JSContact profiles, Section 4 illustrates JSContact profiles by example, Section 5 summarizes the relevant information for IANA to establish the JSContact Profiles registry.¶
A JSContact profile is a named subset of JSContact properties. The JSContact properties MUST be registered in the IANA JSContact registry. A JSContact extension MAY define both a new profile and new properties, as long as they are registered at the same time.¶
A JSContact object conforms to a profile if all its properties are in the subset of properties defined by that profile and its property values comply with the profile restrictions.¶
A JSContact profile MUST be registered at IANA (see Section 5).¶
A JSContact profile MUST have a unique name. The name MUST only contain ASCII lowercase alphabetic and numeric characters, optionally separated by a hyphen. Formally, it MUST be a valid "profile-name" defined in the appendix section in Figure 1.¶
A JSContact profile MUST define its current version. That version identifier MUST be a valid "jsversion" value as defined in Section 1.9.1 of [RFC9553]. Any addition to the list of JSContact properties supported by that profile (Section 3.3) MUST update the current version.¶
Should the semantic versioning scheme not be adequate for protocol designers making use of JSContact profiles, then an alternative approach is to register a new JSContact profile for each new version.¶
The subset of JSContact object properties supported by a profile is defined by a list of object properties. A JSContact property of an object type is part of this subset if one of the following conditions apply:¶
A profile MUST explicitly list at least one property.¶
If at least one property is listed explicitly for an object type, then all mandatory properties of that object type MUST be listed (this is to allow a profile restrict an object type to only its mandatory properties).¶
The following properties need not be listed, they are always supported:¶
The "uid" property of the Card object is implicitly supported, unless it is explicitly not supported as outlined in Section 3.4.¶
For each supported property, a profile MAY define an optional property to be mandatory for that profile. It also MAY restrict the value type signature of a multi-typed property e.g. only allow the value type "A" for a property having value type "A|B".¶
In contrast, a profile MUST NOT define mandatory properties to be optional, except for the "uid" Card object property as outlined in Section 3.4. It also MUST NOT fully replace or expand the value type signature of a property, or change the default type of a multi-typed property.¶
The "uid" property [RFC9553] (Section 2.1.9) is defined to be mandatory for the Card object. This is preferable for use in addressbooks and other contact management systems. For example, it helps deduplicating contact data when merging addressbooks, and to use the same identifier to represent contact data in both JSContact and vCard Format [RFC6350].¶
Yet, protocol designer might prefer to set protocol-specific identifiers that are incompatible with the "uid" property value definition in some other Card property, or not to set any identifier at all. For this, a JSContact profile MAY define the Card "uid" property to either be optional or not supported at all for that profile.¶
The JSContact PatchObject value type [RFC9553] (Section 1.4.3) allows to patch both top-level properties and nested properties in a Card object. This results in a compact representation, as only the actually changed property values are included in the patch. Notably, the "localizations" property [RFC9553] (Section 2.7.1) of the Card object uses PatchObject values to localize Card properties.¶
Yet, protocol designers might prefer not to support patching nested properties, typically the goal being to simplify the processing of JSContact data. For this, a JSContact profile MAY define nested PatchObject keys to not be supported. Each JSON Pointer key in a PatchObject then MUST consist of exactly one JSON Pointer reference token [RFC6901] (Section 3). In context of the "localizations" property, this means that a localized Card replaces one or more top-level properties entirely.¶
This section provides an example for a JSContact profile. This profile is just for illustration, it is not registered at IANA.¶
Property Name | Property Context | Restricted to be Mandatory | Restricted Property Type | Since Profile Version |
---|---|---|---|---|
addresses | Card | 1.0 | ||
emails | Card | 1.0 | ||
kind | Card | 1.0 | ||
localizations | Card | 1.0 | ||
name | Card | 1.0 | ||
full | Address | Mandatory | 1.0 | |
components | Name | 1.0 | ||
full | Name | 1.0 | ||
kind | NameComponent | 1.0 | ||
value | NameComponent | 1.0 |
This profile describes contact cards that can only contain:¶
In addition, the profile defines that the "uid" property of the Card object type must not be set.¶
The following Card object conforms to that profile:¶
{ "@type": "Card", "version": "1.0", "name": { "components": [ { "kind": "given", "value": "Akiyo" }, { "kind": "surname", "value": "Murakami" } ] }, "addresses": { "a1": { "full": "71 Cherry Court, Somewhere, 123SO, UK" } }, "emails": { "e1": { "address": "akiyo@example.com" } }, "localizations": { "jp": { "name": { "components": [ { "kind": "surname", "value": "村上" }, { "kind": "given", "value": "啓代" } ] } } } }¶
This document does not provide new security considerations. The security considerations of Section 4 of [RFC9553] apply.¶
profile-name = LALPHA *[ ["-"] LALPHA ] LALPHA = %x61-7A | DIGIT ; a-z or 0-9