objective c - How to get a Phone Number from an Address Book Contact (iphone sdk)

Question

I am showing an addressbook view to the user and letting them click on a contact and select a phone number. If they select a phone number, I want to get the phone number as an integer and the contact's name as an NSString.

I've tried doing it with the following code:

    //printf("%s
",[[(NSArray *)ABMultiValueCopyArrayOfAllValues(theProperty) objectAtIndex:identifier] UTF8String]);

    //CFArrayRef *arrayString = [[(NSArray *)ABMultiValueCopyArrayOfAllValues(theProperty) objectAtIndex:identifier] UTF8String];
    NSArray *arrayString = [(NSArray *)ABMultiValueCopyArrayOfAllValues(theProperty) objectAtIndex:identifier];
    printf("%s
", arrayString);

This code is inside this method:

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

And I am checking if the user selected a phone number with this code:

if (propertyType == kABStringPropertyType)   
{
    [self wrongSelection];

} 
else if (propertyType == kABIntegerPropertyType)     
{
    [self wrongSelection];

} 
else if (propertyType == kABRealPropertyType)    
{
    [self wrongSelection];
} 
else if (propertyType == kABMultiStringPropertyType)     
{
     //This is the phone number...

I am able to get the phone number to display in the console with printf, however I can't figure out how to convert it into an integer and how to also get the contacts name even though the property selected is not a person's name.

Also, what I'm doing seems very inefficient. Are there any better ways to do this?

Edit: If I can't store them as an int, a string would be fine. I just can't figure out how to go from that array to an actual string. If I cast it or save it as a UTF8String I always get some error.

Answer 1

To get the property efficiently (as far as reading goes), you can do something like this in your callback method:

switch( propertyType ) {
  case kABMultiStringPropertyType:
    // this is the phone number, do something
    break;
  default:
    [self wrongSelection];
    break;
}

I'm not sure you actually even need to parse that, though. To get the phone number from the record you could do (again, inside your callback method):

ABMultiValueRef phoneNumberProperty = ABRecordCopyValue(person, kABPersonPhoneProperty);
NSArray* phoneNumbers = (NSArray*)ABMultiValueCopyArrayOfAllValues(phoneNumberProperty);
CFRelease(phoneNUmberProperty);

// Do whatever you want with the phone numbers
NSLog(@"Phone numbers = %@", phoneNumbers);
[phoneNumbers release];