how do i fetch thunderbird's contacts using a c++ program

Question

I want to fetch contacts from thunderbird using a C++ program. As Outlook exposes API to access contacts,tasks,events and notes,is there any API by which i can access Thunderbird contacts ??? If not please tell me some other solution to access the thunderbird's addressbook.

Answer 1

There is a page at Mozilla (MDN) which describes the API for the address book (https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Thunderbird/Thunderbird_API_documentation) but it seems to be a bit out-of-date (last update was in 2000).

The good thing about Open Source is that you can check out the API for yourself. Hopefully it's also well commented to a large extent (I haven't checked it out though). Thread here http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=591519.

You can get the source code at https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Download_Mozilla_Source_Code. They also have some information at their Wiki regarding getting help in development (for instance connect to their IRC channel (https://wiki.mozilla.org/Thunderbird/Development).