What is the correct way to associate with a ABPerson?

Question

In many of my apps, it requires associating some data with a contact in addressbook. What I used to do is save the record id of an ABPerson and use that id to pull information upon each app launch. However, more and more I find that this approach is wrong because many times a user will use a service like mobileme where the addressbook is wiped and resynced. This causes the record id to change and all associations are lost. The user will have to go through each one and re-link them.

What is a better approach to holding a robust pointer to addressbook entries?

Answer 1

If the address book is indeed being completely wiped and re-loaded, and the only part that doesn't change is the display name, then storing the display name as the link seems like the only option.

Answer 2

You should store three values: the record ID, the first name, and the last name.

1) In the case that the record ID hasn't changed, you're golden - just use that to locate the proper record.

2) If ABAddressBookGetPersonWithRecordID() does not locate a record for your stored record ID (it returns NULL), then you'll need to search the person records for a match based on the first and last name. You can drop down to using ABAddressBookCopyPeopleWithName() potentially or write your own locating code if you already have an array with all the person records in-memory. Locating the new record is up to you. Once to locate the new record, you can update your data storage with the new record ID.

Ultimately, you end up storing the record ID to use directly incase it doesn't change (if you're lucky) plus storing some keys from the address book entry that are unlikely to change. The name of the person or organization associated with an address book entry is most likely to change. You should, of course, account for the case where you may not find a record with the stored record ID or by searching for the name. This could trivially mean that the record was deleted, or it could mean that the record was renamed. You should handle that case whichever way you decide is best for your specific application.

Answer 3

I know this was last year, however, I thought I might suggest a method I use. The first time I ask the user to pick a contact (in order to associate certain of my app's private data with it) I then grab the record, create my own internal record id (the initials of the app name and a sequence number usually) modify the contact by adding a new ABRelatedName (type of "pref" name of "Other") value of my own internal record id. It looks like this in the .vcf

item3.X-ABRELATEDNAMES;type=pref:BZA101
item3.X-ABLabel:_$!<Other>!$_

That way, I can simply reference that record id when i add more data about the user such as the last time the app user contacted them, etc. Seems to work for me.

Hope that helps someone.