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This article describes the necessary steps to integrate one’s Google-based address book to the Roundcube web-based IMAP client.
For people who tend to keep their personal information like contacts data in one self-managed place, it must seem rather lame to store those data at Google’s. Yet, there are virtually no free open source address books out there that could do what Google offers: full bidirectional sync with basically all mobile devices and support for major protocols. Therefore, using Google as storage for contacts data seems appropriate for the time being. Also, the integration with Google’s Calendar works like a charm. But that’s for another article.
Download of Google Contacts plugin
The necessary plugin can be retrieved from the following website: http://sourceforge.net/projects/roundcubegoogle/files/. It is supposed to be stored in Roundcube’s plugins folder, where it is unpacked by:
tar xzf google_contacts-<version_numnber>.tar.gz
There is a config file alongside with the archive. It’s options do not need customization for general needs.
Creating the database table
In the plugin’s SQL-subfolder there is a file called mysql.initial.sql. After creating a new table called google_contacts in your Roundcube’s database, import the file mysql.initial.sql into the new table.
Installation of Zend package
The Google Contacts plugin needs the Zend GData APIs for it to work. Download the most recent version from http://framework.zend.com/download/webservices and place it into Roundcube’s program/libs folder. After unpacking the according archive, a folder called ZendGdata-<version_number> should be there. In order to have Roundcube finding the relevant libs, create a symbolic link in program/libs as follows:
ln -s ZendGdata-1.11.10/library/Zend .
Configure Google Contacts access
If all went right there should be a new option in a user’s Roundcube settings. Under the section “Address Book” it is now possible to enter one’s Google account name and password. The next access to the user’s address book in Roundcube will trigger the sync with Google’s address book so that all existing contacts will be available.
There is one bug: The programm is missing a column ‘words’ in the field list of the table google_contacts. After inserting this column the programm works fine. The same bug is in the contacts field list, so you are not able to import vCards.