iPhone Address Book: List Sources and Accounts

Question

I need to select the address book source in which contacts are created by my app.

In the Contacts app, when I select "< Groups", I get the options

All Contacts
MobileMe
- All MobileMe
- Company
- Family
- Friends
- …
ACME Exchange
- ACME Exchange Global Address List
Test CardDAV
- Addressbook
- Search

Using the function ABAddressBookCopyArrayOfAllSources I get source records for

No name; type: kABSourceTypeMobileMe
No name; type: kABSourceTypeExchangeGAL
"Addressbook"; type: kABSourceTypeCardDAV
"Search"; type: kABSourceTypeCardDAVSearch

The names are in no way descriptive and I would like to show the account names in addition to the source name or type, just like the Contact app does.

Do you know a way to find out the account name of a source, or to retrieve all existing account names and the sources of each account? Any other ideas to get more descriptive entries?

Did you find out, how to list the account names? i.e. in your example: ACME Exchange or Test CardDAV — letsdev-cwack

Carlton Gibson Carlton Gibson · Accepted Answer · 2012-04-26T14:08:15

As of iOS 5.1 there is no public API for this.

One would hope that ABRecordCopyCompositeName() would get what you're after — it provides the "human friendly" name for Person and Group records — but alas it returns null.

As Graham pointed out (when offering a bounty) directly asking for kABSourceNameProperty provides the wrong answer.

ABAddressBookRef addressBook = ABAddressBookCreate();
CFArrayRef sources = ABAddressBookCopyArrayOfAllSources(addressBook);

CFIndex i, c = CFArrayGetCount(sources);
ABRecordRef curSource;

// Log each source name.
for (i=0; i<c; i++) {
    curSource = CFArrayGetValueAtIndex(sources, i);
    NSString *name = (__bridge_transfer NSString *)ABRecordCopyCompositeName(curSource);
    NSLog(@"Alas this is null: %@", name);


    NSString *directValue = (__bridge_transfer NSString *)ABRecordCopyValue(curSource,kABSourceNameProperty);
    NSLog(@"And direct access gives wrong answer: %@", directValue);

}

CFRelease(sources);
CFRelease(addressBook);

All I can suggest is filing a Radar to ask that ABRecordCopyCompositeName() be made to make whatever service Contacts itself is using available to the rest of us.

iPhone Address Book: List Sources and Accounts

2 Answers