How to pick a 'Group' instead of an individual 'Person' from the ABPeoplePickerNavigationController?

Question

Although the Address Book Programming Guide for iOS clearly explains how the ABPeoplePickerNavigationController class allows users to browse their list of contacts and select a person. I was wondering how can a 'Group' be picked instead.

Answer 1

I don't know if your problem is solved by now. I just run into the same problem. As far as I can see, iOS does not provide a "ready made" way to access groups in the address book like the people picker http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/ContactData/Conceptual/AddressBookProgrammingGuideforiPhone/Chapters/UI_Controllers.html.
However, you can access all group information like in the following example code (you had to add error handling), but you had to program your user interface by yourself.

CFErrorRef error;
ABAddressBookRef addressBook = ABAddressBookCreateWithOptions (NULL, &error);
CFArrayRef groups = ABAddressBookCopyArrayOfAllGroups (addressBook);
ABRecordRef firstGroup = CFArrayGetValueAtIndex (groups,0);
CFStringRef nameOfFirstGroup = ABRecordCopyCompositeName (firstGroup);
CFRelease(nameOfFirstGroup);
CFArrayRef members = ABGroupCopyArrayOfAllMembers (firstGroup);
ABRecordRef firstMember = CFArrayGetValueAtIndex (members,0);
CFStringRef nameOfFirstMember = ABRecordCopyCompositeName (firstMember);
CFRelease(nameOfFirstMember);
CFRelease(members);
CFRelease(groups);
CFRelease(addressBook);

EDIT:
Sorry, the code above releases the different objects too early. Please put the CFRelease statements at the end of the code.