Introduction

In this tutorial I will explain how you can retrieve a Contact(s) from your AddressBook (in iPhone) though coding. In iPhone you can retrieve contact information stored in address book easier then you can think. You can retrieve their pictures (photos), email address(es) and anything user stored in AddressBook. Note: iPhone provided easy access to user contacts but put a good restriction on editing those. Your application can retrieved all contact information but could not change it. Your application can edit it and present it to user, user click on save then those changes will be stored in AddressBook. In this tutorial, I will explain simple steps to retrieve user contact Information and final output will look like this:

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This tutorial is for Sudha who requested for this in ‘Request iPhone Tutorial‘ section (Note: any one can request for iPhone tutorial there).

Get Started

Now, start following the steps to retrieve contact information from AddressBook.
Step 1. Create a new Xcode project, name it ‘RetrieveContactInfo’

Step 2. In ‘Group & File’ panel, expand ‘Frameworks’ section. Right click on any framework and then select ‘Reveal in Finder’ (figure 3). In new finder window scroll to top and you will see two frameworks there ‘AddressBook.framework’ and ‘AddressBookUI.framework’. Drag them inside your ‘Frameworks’ folder & do not click on ‘Copy items into destination group’s folder’.
[5,6,7,8,9,10]

3. Remove all the code inside ‘RetrieveContactInfoViewController.h’ and place the following code:

//
//  RetrieveContactInfoViewController.h
//  RetrieveContactInfo
//
//  Created by Adeem on 26/05/09.
//  Copyright __MyCompanyName__ 2009. All rights reserved.
//

#import
#import
#import
@interface RetrieveContactInfoViewController : UIViewController  {
ABPeoplePickerNavigationController *picker;
IBOutlet UILabel *phoneNo;
IBOutlet UILabel *email;
IBOutlet UILabel *name;
}

-(IBAction)chooseContacts;

@end

4. Now in ‘RetrieveContactInfoViewController.m’ class before @end, write the following code:

-(IBAction)chooseContacts {
// creating the picker
if(!picker){
picker = [[ABPeoplePickerNavigationController alloc] init];
// place the delegate of the picker to the controll
picker.peoplePickerDelegate = self;
}
// showing the picker
[self presentModalViewController:picker animated:YES];
}

/**************  Contacts Delegate Functions  ***************/

- (BOOL)peoplePickerNavigationController: (ABPeoplePickerNavigationController *)peoplePicker shouldContinueAfterSelectingPerson:(ABRecordRef)person {
ABMutableMultiValueRef phoneMulti = ABRecordCopyValue(person, kABPersonPhoneProperty);
NSMutableArray *phones = [[NSMutableArray alloc] init];
int i;
for (i = 0; i < ABMultiValueGetCount(phoneMulti); i++) {
NSString *aPhone = [(NSString*)ABMultiValueCopyValueAtIndex(phoneMulti, i) autorelease];
//	NSLog(@"PhoneLabel : %@ &amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp; Phone# : %@",aLabel,aPhone);
[phones addObject:aPhone];
}

NSString *mobileNo = [phones objectAtIndex:0];
phoneNo.text = mobileNo;
NSLog(mobileNo);
name.text = (NSString*)ABRecordCopyCompositeName(person);

ABMutableMultiValueRef emailMulti = ABRecordCopyValue(person, kABPersonEmailProperty);
NSMutableArray *emails = [[NSMutableArray alloc] init];
for (i = 0; i  0)
{
NSString *emailAdress = [emails objectAtIndex:0];

email.text = emailAdress;
NSLog(emailAdress);
}
[peoplePicker dismissModalViewControllerAnimated:YES];

return YES;
}

- (BOOL)peoplePickerNavigationController: (ABPeoplePickerNavigationController *)peoplePicker
shouldContinueAfterSelectingPerson:(ABRecordRef)person
property:(ABPropertyID)property
identifier:(ABMultiValueIdentifier)identifier{

return NO;

}

- (void)peoplePickerNavigationControllerDidCancel:(ABPeoplePickerNavigationController *)peoplePicker {
// assigning control back to the main controller
[picker dismissModalViewControllerAnimated:YES];
}

5. Open ‘RetrieveContactInfoViewController.xib’ file which you can find in ‘Group & File’ panel. Place three labels and one button inside view.

6. Select ‘Files Owner’ in xib file and press cmd + 2 to open ‘Connection Inspector’. In Outlets, click on circle next to email and drag it to second label. Same way map all the labels with controller.

7. Run the application and final output will be like this

You can grab the code from here.

This is a guest post by Zubair Daud, an iPhone developer. Click here to find out more about him.

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