Read contacts from Addressbook using Xamarin Forms

Question

Within my Xamarin Forms App I need to get a list of all contacts stored in the local addressbook of the phone (iOS and Android). Unfortunately all posts I found (e.g. How to Read contacts in Xamarin forms , How to read user phone book contacts without using any plugin or package or How to access address book in Xamarin.Forms ) advise to use James Montemagnos Contacts.Plugin.

But on the plugin page it says "THIS PLUGIN IS NOT UNDER DEVELOPMENT AND NOT SUPPORTED". Additionally also the nuget package is unlisted so it could not be added to new projects.

I did not find any other plugin to read contacts from iOS and Android Addressbook using Xamarin Forms. Anyone any idea? Many thanks!

Answer 1

Plugins are just someone else's code you can write yourself as well. If there are no (actively developed) plugins available, you will have to write something yourself.

This will involve heavy use of the DependencyService in Xamarin.Forms. The code by James can actually be a good starting point. The fact that is not under active maintenance doesn't mean it's unusable. Try to incorporate usable bits that fulfill your requirements.

Or, if you're really ambitious, fork the plugin, see what still works or what needs to be improved and make it your own.