The document provides a guide on how to use the cardmagic-contacts plug-in with Rails 2.3.8 to collect contacts from various email providers like Gmail and Yahoo. Steps include downloading the plug-in, adding the necessary code to a controller, and creating actions to fetch contacts based on user credentials. It also describes an alternate method to gather contacts from multiple accounts and how to display them in a view page.

1. Collecting Contacts using cardmagic-contacts plug-in in Rails 2.3.8
cardmagic-contacts is a rails plug-in which provides an interface to fetch contact list
information from various email providers including Hotmail, AOL, Gmail, Plaxo, Yahoo and many
more.
This example narrates how to extract contact list using Rails 2.3.8 and cardmagic-contacts plug-in
Step#1
Download the plug-in by running the command below to store the plug-in in the folder
“vendor/plug-ins”
Windows
ruby script/plugin install git://github.com/cardmagic/contacts
Linux
ruby script/plugin http://github.com/cardmagic/contacts
Step#2
Write down the following code on the top of the controller class
require 'contacts'
Step#3
Pass the required gmail/yahoo/hotmail/AOL login & password from view
<div>
<div style="margin-left:25px;" >Invite <img
src="../images/yahoo.JPG">Yahoo
Friends </div>
<div style="margin-left:25px;">Yahoo Email: <input type="text"
name="email"
class="txt" id="yahoo_email_id"></div>
<div style="margin-left:25px;">Password: &nbsp;&nbsp;<input
type="password"

2. name="email" class="txt" id="yahoo_pwd_id"></div>
<div style="margin-left:122px;margin-top:20px;"><input type="button"
value="Login" name="btn_submit" id="btn_submit" class="searchbutton"
></div>
</div>
Step#4
Create an action to fetch the list of contacts for a specific email id
def grab_contacts
#Grab gmail contacts
@gmail_contacts=Contacts::Gmail.new(login, password).contacts
#or
@gmail_contacts=Contacts.new(:gmail, login, password).contacts
#Grab yahoo contacts
@yahoo_contacts = Contacts::Yahoo.new(login, password).contacts
#or
@yahoo_contacts = Contacts.new(:yahoo, login, password).contacts
#Grab hotmail contacts
@hotmail_contacts =Contacts::Hotmail.new(login, password).contacts
#or
@hotmail_contacts = Contacts.new(:hotmail, login, password).contacts
end
Step#5
Here is also alternate method to get the contacts by providing email_id and password
any_mail = Contacts.guess(login, password).contacts
The “Contacts.guess” method will automatically concatenate the entire address book from each of
the successful logins. If the login and password is working with multiple email accounts then it will
grab the contacts from all accounts.
Step#6
Display the friends list in your view page

3. <table>
<th>
<td >Friends Name</td>
<td >Friends Email</td>
</th>
<tr>
<% @gmail_contacts.each do |contact| %>
<td><%=contact[0]%></td>
<td><%=contact[1]%></td>
<% end %>
</tr>
</table>