Accessing iOS Address Book with Swift: array count of zero

Question

I am trying to write a simple method to ask a user for access to their address book and then print out the name of each person in the address book. I've seen a number of tutorials explaining how to do this in objective-C, but am having a hard time converting them to swift.

Here's what I've done so far. The below block runs in my viewDidLoad() method and checks to see whether the user has authorized access to the address book or not, if they have not authorized access yet, the first if-statement will ask for access. This section works as expected.

var emptyDictionary: CFDictionaryRef?

var addressBook: ABAddressBookRef?

        if (ABAddressBookGetAuthorizationStatus() == ABAuthorizationStatus.NotDetermined)
        {
            println("requesting access...")
            addressBook = !ABAddressBookCreateWithOptions(emptyDictionary,nil)
            ABAddressBookRequestAccessWithCompletion(addressBook,{success, error in
            if success {
                self.getContactNames();
            }
            else
            {
                println("error")
            }
        })
    }
        }
        else if (ABAddressBookGetAuthorizationStatus() == ABAuthorizationStatus.Denied || ABAddressBookGetAuthorizationStatus() == ABAuthorizationStatus.Restricted)
        {
            println("access denied")
        }
        else if (ABAddressBookGetAuthorizationStatus() == ABAuthorizationStatus.Authorized)
        {
            println("access granted")
            getContactNames()
        }

Once I know the user has granted access, I run the getContactNames() method which is below. After much back and forth, I was finally able to get this to compile by adding the takeRetainedValue() method in order to convert the array returned by ABAddressBookCopyArrayOfAllPeople from an unmanaged array to a managed array, this then allows me to convert the CFArrayRef to an NSArray.

The issue I'm running into is that the contactList array ends up having a count of 0 and the for loop therefore gets skipped. In my simulator, the address book has 6 or 7 records, so I would expect the array to be of that length. Any ideas?

func getContactNames()
    {
        addressBook = !ABAddressBookCreateWithOptions(emptyDictionary,nil)
        var contactList: NSArray = ABAddressBookCopyArrayOfAllPeople(addressBook).takeRetainedValue()
        println("records in the array \(contactList.count)") // returns 0

        for record:ABRecordRef in contactList {
            var contactPerson: ABRecordRef = record
            var contactName: String = ABRecordCopyCompositeName(contactPerson).takeRetainedValue()
            println ("contactName \(contactName)")
        }
    }

One additional point - if I use the ABAddressBookGetPersonCount method, it returns -1.

 var count: CFIndex = ABAddressBookGetPersonCount(addressBook);
        println("records in the array \(count)") // returns -1

Based on this link ABAddressBookGetPersonCount returns -1 in iOS, it seems that this function returning -1 could be related to permission not being granted, but I definitely have asked for permission in the code above (and granted it when I run the app in the simulator)

Answer 1

This is now all much simpler. The chief thing to watch out for is that if you create an ABAddressBook without authorization, you get an evil address book - it isn't nil but it isn't good for anything either. Here's how I currently recommend that you set up authorization status and request authorization if necessary:

var adbk : ABAddressBook!

func createAddressBook() -> Bool {
    if self.adbk != nil {
        return true
    }
    var err : Unmanaged<CFError>? = nil
    let adbk : ABAddressBook? = ABAddressBookCreateWithOptions(nil, &err).takeRetainedValue()
    if adbk == nil {
        println(err)
        self.adbk = nil
        return false
    }
    self.adbk = adbk
    return true
}

func determineStatus() -> Bool {
    let status = ABAddressBookGetAuthorizationStatus()
    switch status {
    case .Authorized:
        return self.createAddressBook()
    case .NotDetermined:
        var ok = false
        ABAddressBookRequestAccessWithCompletion(nil) {
            (granted:Bool, err:CFError!) in
            dispatch_async(dispatch_get_main_queue()) {
                if granted {
                    ok = self.createAddressBook()
                }
            }
        }
        if ok == true {
            return true
        }
        self.adbk = nil
        return false
    case .Restricted:
        self.adbk = nil
        return false
    case .Denied:
        self.adbk = nil
        return false
    }
}

And here's how to cycle through all persons and print out their names:

func getContactNames() {
    if !self.determineStatus() {
        println("not authorized")
        return
    }
    let people = ABAddressBookCopyArrayOfAllPeople(adbk).takeRetainedValue() as NSArray as [ABRecord]
    for person in people {
        println(ABRecordCopyCompositeName(person).takeRetainedValue())
    }
}