Problems importing contacts in ABAddressBook to text file

Question

I have created a simple contact app using Apple's addressbook and with the following delegates ABNewPersonViewControllerDelegate,ABPeoplePickerNavigationControllerDelegate and ABPersonViewControllerDelegate and it has the features: Create, Edit and Delete contact. Now I want to add an option through which all my Created contacts along with the phone numbers will be imported on a text file. This is my code:

-(void)fetchContacts
{
    addressBooks =ABAddressBookCreate();
    CFArrayRef people = ABAddressBookCopyArrayOfAllPeople(addressBooks);
    for (CFIndex i = 0; i < CFArrayGetCount(people); i++)
    {
        person12 = CFArrayGetValueAtIndex(people, i);
        NSString *tweet=[[NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@",(__bridge_transfer NSString *)ABRecordCopyValue(person12, kABPersonFirstNameProperty)] stringByTrimmingCharactersInSet:[NSCharacterSet whitespaceCharacterSet]];

        if(CFBridgingRelease(ABRecordCopyValue(person12,kABPersonLastNameProperty))!=NULL)
        {
            tweet=[tweet stringByAppendingString:@" "];
            tweet=[tweet stringByAppendingString:[[NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@",(__bridge_transfer NSString *)ABRecordCopyValue(person12, kABPersonLastNameProperty)] stringByTrimmingCharactersInSet:[NSCharacterSet whitespaceCharacterSet]]];

        }
        if(CFBridgingRelease(ABRecordCopyValue(person12,kABPersonFirstNameProperty))!=NULL)
        {
            tweet=[tweet stringByAppendingString:@" ---> "];
            tweet=[tweet stringByAppendingString:[[NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@",(__bridge_transfer NSString *)ABRecordCopyValue(person12, kABPersonPhoneProperty)] stringByTrimmingCharactersInSet:[NSCharacterSet whitespaceCharacterSet]]];
        }
        NSLog(@"%@",tweet); 

        NSString* documentPlistPath = [[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:@"Contacts" ofType:@"txt"];
            [tweet writeToFile:documentPlistPath atomically:NO  encoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding error:nil];

        NSLog(@"%@",documentPlistPath);
    }
    CFBridgingRelease(people);

}

I have two problems here now:

1) On NSLog, the tweet contains all value but in following format like: FirstName LastName ---> ABMultiValueRef 0x6c26760 with 1 value(s) 0: $!!$ (0x6c26b60) - PhoneNumber (0x6c26b80)

I need it in this format FirstName LastName ---> PhoneNumber

2)The Contact.txt file is not get populated. On NSLog Path is correct. Please advice whats wrong here.

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 09 '13 at 04:19

1) I was able to solve the first problem with the help of this code

ABMultiValueRef multi = ABRecordCopyValue(person12, kABPersonPhoneProperty);
            if(ABMultiValueGetCount(multi)!=0)
            {
            //For fetching multiple Phone Numbers
            for (int i=0; i < ABMultiValueGetCount(multi); i++) 
                {
            temp = (__bridge_transfer NSString*)ABMultiValueCopyValueAtIndex(multi, i);
                phoneNumbers=[phoneNumbers stringByAppendingString:[NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@/",temp]];
                }
             }

2) For this issue I used NSFile manager, I modified the code bit more to output in UIWebView. Here are some main functions in case someone else needs it.

//For reading the file

- (IBAction)readFileAction:(id)sender {


    //Test whether this file exists before we read it
    if([self.fileMgr fileExistsAtPath:self.file])
    {

        NSString *content = [[NSString alloc] initWithContentsOfFile:self.file usedEncoding:nil error:nil];
        [webview loadHTMLString:content baseURL:nil];

    }
    else 
    {
        NSString *content = @"Contact list is not generated yet, click on create to generate the contact list";
        [webview loadHTMLString:content baseURL:nil];
    }
}

- (IBAction)deleteFileAction:(id)sender {

    //Test whether this file exists now that we have tried to remove it
    if([self.fileMgr fileExistsAtPath:self.file])
    {
        // attempt to delete file from documents directory
        [fileMgr removeItemAtPath:self.file error:nil];
        if([self.fileMgr fileExistsAtPath:self.file])
        {

            NSString *content = @"File still exists after trying to remove it";
            [webview loadHTMLString:content baseURL:nil];
        }
        else 
        {
            [webview loadHTMLString:@"" baseURL:nil];
            NSString *content = @"We've successfully removed the contact file";
            [webview loadHTMLString:content baseURL:nil];
        }
    }
    else {

        NSString *content = @"File does not exist no need to remove it.";
        [webview loadHTMLString:content baseURL:nil];
    }
}

- (IBAction)createFileAction:(id)sender {

     // To create file
        [self.fileMgr createFileAtPath:file contents:nil attributes:nil];

        [allContacts writeToFile:self.file atomically:NO encoding:NSStringEncodingConversionAllowLossy error:nil];


        //Test if file exists now that we have tried creating it
        if([self.fileMgr fileExistsAtPath:self.file])
        {

            NSString *content = @"Contact list generated click on view to show the list";
            [webview loadHTMLString:content baseURL:nil];
        }
        else 
        {

            NSString *content = @"Contact list is not created yet, click on create to generate the contact list";
            [webview loadHTMLString:content baseURL:nil];
        }

}


- (void)viewDidLoad
{
    [super viewDidLoad];
    // Do any additional setup after loading the view from its nib.
    // create the fileManager
    self.fileMgr = [NSFileManager defaultManager];

    // get array of paths
    self.paths = NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains(NSDocumentDirectory, NSUserDomainMask, YES);

    // get documents directory path
    self.documentsDirectory = [paths objectAtIndex:0];

    // create the file name with qualified path ot the file
    self.file = [documentsDirectory stringByAppendingPathComponent:@"TestPage.html"];

}

Problems importing contacts in ABAddressBook to text file

1 Answers1