Parse errors in a contact make the entire app UI fail and show no contacts at all

[benbucksch]

Describe the bug

Importing some vCards makes the Contacts web UI show no contacts at all, not even the older contacts and address books. There is no way to get out of this state, within the web UI. Need external tools or admin access to fix it.

Steps to reproduce

0. Populate your Contacts and primary address book with some normal valid contacts
1. Get vCard test data, and extract the ZIP file. Original source: vcard-test-suite valid test samples
2. Log in to NextCloud and go to Contacts app
3. Create a new addressbook "Test"
4. Import: Click "Import", select addressbook "Test", click "Select local file", and select the all.vcf file from step 1
5. -> None of the vcards import properly, but the groups have been created, and their number shows that they have contacts, but none of them show
6. Log out and log in again

Expected behavior

• You get a report about errors during import, one entry per contact
• If there are individual properties that are invalid or not supported, skip those, and still import the rest of the contact
• If the contact cannot be parsed at all, skip it, and import the other contacts
• If none of the contacts could be imported, show an error explaining why
• Other contacts still work
• No "hidden" contacts

Actual behavior

• The Contacts app says that you have no address books at all.
• You cannot see any contacts at all. The app shows "No contacts"
• The groups still show, and they show that they have contacts in the group. But when you click on a group, you see "no contacts"
• The contacts are stored, but there's no way to see them, and no way to remove them, in the web UI
• There are errors on the browser console
• You are stuck. No way to get out.
• When you sync the addressbook via CardDAV with Thunderbird (if you know the CardDAV URL, because the web UI shows "no addressbooks"), you see the contacts in "Test". Some of them have no name, others have punctuation as name. You can delete all contacts in "Test" in Thunderbird. Once that is done (it's very slow), and log out and login again, then you can see your normal contacts (from step 0), and the groups are gone as well.

Contact version

7.3.16

NextCloud version

Nextcloud Hub 10 (31.0.13)

Operating system

Linux 6.8.0-94-generic x86_64

PHP engine version

PHP 8.3

Web server

Unknown

Database

MySQL

Additional info

No response

[benbucksch]

all.zip with test data vCards

[benbucksch]

Note that these were vCards that are supposed to be valid. When fixing this, please also test with invalid contacts from the same source. No single contact, no matter how badly construed, should make the app UI fail and prevent from seeing the other contacts.

[SebastianKrupinski]

Hi @benbucksch

Thank you for the report. We look in to it when there is time.

[seblu]

I think I'm hit by that too after a migration from 31.x to 32.0.6. Contact app version is 8.3.4.

Partial information in the contact UI despite an expected webDAV behavior.

javascript console message is:

TypeError: can't access property "getAllSubcomponents", this.component is null
    _ensureCoverage ical.js:3145
    utcOffset ical.js:3041
    toString ical.js:4069
    get key contact.js:201
    get reactivity.esm-bundler.js:993
    sortedContacts contacts.js:220
    sortContacts contacts.js:220
    S8 vuex.esm-bundler.js:315
    commit vuex.esm-bundler.js:1005
    commit vuex.esm-bundler.js:1004
    _withCommit vuex.esm-bundler.js:1163
    commit vuex.esm-bundler.js:1003
    commit vuex.esm-bundler.js:940
    getContactsFromAddressBook addressbooks.js:415
    promise callback*getContactsFromAddressBook addressbooks.js:380
    N8 vuex.esm-bundler.js:322
    dispatch vuex.esm-bundler.js:1055
    dispatch vuex.esm-bundler.js:937
    fetchContacts Contacts.vue:360
    p reactivity.esm-bundler.js:905
    zt reactivity.esm-bundler.js:913
    map reactivity.esm-bundler.js:837
    fetchContacts Contacts.vue:356
    beforeMount Contacts.vue:258
    promise callback*beforeMount/< Contacts.vue:247
    promise callback*beforeMount Contacts.vue:242
    sn runtime-core.esm-bundler.js:3056
    ir runtime-core.esm-bundler.js:199
    wt runtime-core.esm-bundler.js:206
    __weh runtime-core.esm-bundler.js:3036
    On shared.esm-bundler.js:85
    H runtime-core.esm-bundler.js:5998
    run reactivity.esm-bundler.js:237
    z runtime-core.esm-bundler.js:6179
    ce runtime-core.esm-bundler.js:5953
    ee runtime-core.esm-bundler.js:5905
    g runtime-core.esm-bundler.js:5403
    H runtime-core.esm-bundler.js:6131
    run reactivity.esm-bundler.js:237
    runIfDirty reactivity.esm-bundler.js:275
    ir runtime-core.esm-bundler.js:199
    Hl runtime-core.esm-bundler.js:408
    promise callback*jl runtime-core.esm-bundler.js:322
    Mr runtime-core.esm-bundler.js:336
    Iu runtime-core.esm-bundler.js:7454
    scheduler runtime-core.esm-bundler.js:884
    scheduler reactivity.esm-bundler.js:1900
    trigger reactivity.esm-bundler.js:265
    Vi reactivity.esm-bundler.js:323
    notify reactivity.esm-bundler.js:614
    trigger reactivity.esm-bundler.js:588
    set value reactivity.esm-bundler.js:1508
    H vue-router.mjs:1388
    w vue-router.mjs:1316
    promise callback*w vue-router.mjs:1304
    w vue-router.mjs:1289
    N vue-router.mjs:1257
    install vue-router.mjs:1504
    use runtime-core.esm-bundler.js:4103
    <anonymous> main.js:36
addressbooks.js:424:13

[SebastianKrupinski]

@seblu

I think your error might be different... are there any errors for you in the nextcloud.log?

[seblu]

No warning/error

If I enable info level debug:

[seblu]

I can complete that answer by 2 outputs which let me think system is ok.

crontab output

# docker exec -u www-data -ti nextcloud php /var/www/html/cron.php -v
Starting job OCA\Notifications\BackgroundJob\SendNotificationMails (id: 20157, arguments: null)
Job OCA\Notifications\BackgroundJob\SendNotificationMails (id: 20157, arguments: null) done in 0 seconds
Starting job OCA\Deck\Cron\ScheduledNotifications (id: 370205, arguments: null)
Job OCA\Deck\Cron\ScheduledNotifications (id: 370205, arguments: null) done in 0 seconds
Starting job OCA\Deck\Cron\CardDescriptionActivity (id: 370206, arguments: null)
Job OCA\Deck\Cron\CardDescriptionActivity (id: 370206, arguments: null) done in 0 seconds
Starting job OCA\DAV\BackgroundJob\RefreshWebcalJob (id: 473562, arguments: {"principaluri":"principals\/users\/melody","uri":"jours-fris-france"})
Job OCA\DAV\BackgroundJob\RefreshWebcalJob (id: 473562, arguments: {"principaluri":"principals\/users\/melody","uri":"jours-fris-france"}) done in 0 seconds
Starting job OCA\Activity\BackgroundJob\EmailNotification (id: 4, arguments: null)
Job OCA\Activity\BackgroundJob\EmailNotification (id: 4, arguments: null) done in 0 seconds

setupchecks output

# ~/occ.sh setupchecks
	dav:
		✓ DAV system address book: No outstanding DAV system address book sync.
	network:
		✓ WebDAV endpoint: Your web server is properly set up to allow file synchronization over WebDAV.
		✓ Data directory protected
		✓ Internet connectivity
		✓ JavaScript source map support
		✓ JavaScript modules support
		✓ OCS provider resolving
		✓ .well-known URLs: Your server is correctly configured to serve `.well-known` URLs.
		✓ Font file loading
	system:
		✓ Files reminder: The "files_reminders" app can work properly.
		✓ Errors in the log: No errors in the logs since February 24, 2026, 3:26:16 PM
		✓ Allowed admin IP ranges: Admin IP filtering isn't applied.
		ℹ Brute-force Throttle: Your remote address could not be determined.
		✓ Cron errors: The last cron job ran without errors.
		✓ Cron last run: Last background job execution ran 1 minute ago.
		✓ Debug mode: Debug mode is disabled.
		✓ Transactional File Locking
		✓ Maintenance window start: Maintenance window to execute heavy background jobs is between 1:00 UTC and 7:00 UTC
		✓ Memcache: Configured
		✓ Mimetype migrations available: None
		✓ Architecture: 64-bit
		✓ Temporary space available: Temporary directory is correctly configured:
- 37.6 GiB available in /tmp (PHP temporary directory)
		✓ Push service: Free push service
	notifications:
		✓ Push notifications - Fair use policy
	security:
		✓ App directories owner: App directories have the correct owner "www-data"
		✓ Old administration imported certificates
		✓ Code integrity: No altered files
		ℹ Forwarded for headers: Your remote address could not be determined.
		✓ HTTPS access and URLs: You are accessing your instance over a secure connection, and your instance is generating secure URLs.
		✓ Old server-side-encryption: Disabled
		✓ PHP version: You are currently running PHP 8.3.30.
		✓ Random generator: Secure
		⚠ HTTP headers: Some headers are not set correctly on your instance
- The `Strict-Transport-Security` HTTP header is not set (should be at least `15552000` seconds). For enhanced security, it is recommended to enable HSTS.

		ℹ Second factor configuration: Second factor providers are available but two-factor authentication is not enforced.
	database:
		✓ Database missing columns: None
		✓ Database missing indices: None
		✓ Database missing primary keys: None
		✓ Database pending bigint migrations: None
		✓ MySQL row format: None of your tables use ROW_FORMAT=Compressed
		✓ MySQL Unicode support: MySQL is used as database and does support 4-byte characters
		✓ Scheduling objects table size: Scheduling objects table size is within acceptable range.
		✓ Database version: 10.6.25-MariaDB-ubu2204
		✓ Database transaction isolation level: Read committed
	config:
		✓ Default phone region: FR
		✓ Email test: Email test was successfully sent
		✓ Overwrite CLI URL: The "overwrite.cli.url" option in your config.php is set to "https://*******REDACTED******/cloud" which is a correct URL. Suggested URL is "https://localhost/cloud".
		✓ Configuration file access rights: Nextcloud configuration file is writable
	php:
		✓ PHP default charset: UTF-8
		✓ PHP set_time_limit: The function is available.
		✓ Freetype: Supported
		✓ PHP APCu configuration
		✓ PHP getenv
		✓ PHP memory limit: 2 GB
		✓ PHP modules
		✓ PHP opcache: Checking from CLI, OPcache checks have been skipped.
		✓ PHP "output_buffering" option: Disabled
		✓ PHP Imagick module
	ai:
		✓ Task Processing pickup speed: No scheduled tasks in the last 14 days.

[benbucksch]

I think I'm hit by that too after a migration from 31.x to 32.0.6. Contact app version is 8.3.4.

Partial information in the contact UI despite an expected webDAV behavior.

At least sublu's screenshot looks almost exactly like mine when I ran into the bug:

• No contacts shown
• "No contacts" on the left
• "Importing is disabled because ... no address books ..." at the top left, and [New contact] button disabled
• List of groups does show up, and they have numbers for members
• When I click on a group with a number > 0, the right shows "There are no contacts in this group"

So, while sublu's reproduction and specific stack might be different, it may actually be the same root cause.

This bug is about catching errors on the contact/vcard parse level and not let them break the app.

[seblu]

Thanks to a Firefox debugger breakpoint, I finally found the malformed vCard causing the problem.

The issue stemmed from an incorrect parsing of the UID field in

contacts/src/models/contact.js

Line 201 in fd15e10

return Buffer.from(this.uid + '~' + this.addressbook.id, 'utf8').toString('base64')

, which is located in the following vCard:

BEGIN:VCARD
VERSION:3.0
FN: Foo
N:Bar;Baz;;;
ITEM1.EMAIL;TYPE=INTERNET:foo.bar@gmail.com
ITEM1.X-ABLABEL:Perso
ITEM2.X-ABLABEL:Perso
TEL;TYPE=CELL:+33 6 42 42 42 42
TITLE:Secrétaire
BDAY;VALUE=DATE:19911112
UID;VALUE=DATE-TIME:20260203T091857Z
REV:20260203T091742Z
RELATED;TYPE=CONTACT:
END:VCARD%  

Even though the precise cause may be different, the purpose of this bug report is to emphasize that a problem parsing a contact vcard should not lead to an overall inconsistent state.

I removed the UID field via the dav interface and the contacts app is back online.