CardDAV and OS X Server

Question

My intention is to build our company intranet, and store the contacts centrally on our Snow Leopard Server using the Address Book Server functionality. However, I can't for the life of me figure out how I'm supposed to modify the cards. CardDAV seems to be a new standard, and there's little documentation out there.

Apple's Administration document states that you're not meant to modify the vCards directly (stored in /Library/AddressBookServer/Documents/), so that leaves a ruby vCard parsing library out of the equation - e.g vPim.

If i mount the volume via webDAV (ie in the Finder), using the credentials for the user who's contacts they are, e.g. https://server.local:8843/addressbooks/users/username/addressbook, the vcard files are read-only.

if I go to https://server.local:8843/addressbooks/users/username/addressbook/ in a web browser, it lists some DAV methods I'm supposed to work with... but nothing that seems to indicate editing and updating a file.

So what's even the point of exposing the contacts as vcards when you can't even modify them? Could someone point me in the right direction please?

Answer 1

Can't you just edit them from one of your Mac workstations via the addressbook app or entourage?

I think the vcard feature is best used to pull them into the iphone, or into some non "cardDav" application... Not for modifying the information in the addressbook server.