Getting merged/unified entries from ABAddressBook

Question

I'm developing an application that is showing the iPhone contacts.

The ABAddressBookRef returns duplicate entries for a contact that appears only once in the iPhone contacts application.

Looking on the contact card (from the iPhone contacts), in the bottom there is a section called "Linked Contacts" so obviously apple "merge"/"unify" these two entries into the one i see.

The question here is what is the best way to mimic the same behavior so my app will show only one entry? is there an API that returns the merged/unified entries from the address book?

Answer 1

To create a list of contacts that merges in linked contacts:

Note: ABPerson references are stored in custom Person class instances. All persons are then stored in a dictionary addressBookDictionary using recordID of each person as the key.

---

1. Get all ABPersons using ABAddressBookCopyArrayOfAllPeople. Store persons in allPersonRecords array.

2. Iterate through all ABPersons.

---

2.1 Get a list of linked persons for each ABPerson. Use

ABPersonCopyArrayOfAllLinkedPeople(ABRecordRef person);

If there are no linked contacts, this method will return an array including the person reference him/herself. So if the return array has a count > 1, the person has linked contacts.

2.2 Add the linked persons to a NSMutableSet. These linked persons will be skipped and not processed in future iterations.

2.3 Create a Person instance for the current ABPerson.

2.4 Merge linked person information into Person instance. A linked person may have different phone numbers, so you need to merge them together.

---

NSArray *allPersonRecords = (NSArray *) ABAddressBookCopyArrayOfAllPeople(self.addressBook);
NSMutableSet *linkedPersonsToSkip = [[NSMutableSet alloc] init];

for (int i=0; i<[allPersonRecords count]; i++){

    ABRecordRef personRecordRef = [allPersonRecords objectAtIndex:i];

    // skip if contact has already been merged
    //
    if ([linkedPersonsToSkip containsObject:personRecordRef]) {
        continue;
    }

    // Create object representing this person
    //
    Person *thisPerson = [[Person alloc] initWithPersonRef:personRecordRef];

    // check if there are linked contacts & merge their contact information
    //
    NSArray *linked = (NSArray *) ABPersonCopyArrayOfAllLinkedPeople(personRecordRef);
    if ([linked count] > 1) {
        [linkedPersonsToSkip addObjectsFromArray:linked];

        // merge linked contact info
        for (int m = 0; m < [linked count]; m++) {
            ABRecordRef iLinkedPerson = [linked objectAtIndex:m];
            // don't merge the same contact
            if (iLinkedPerson == personRecordRef) {
                continue;
            }
            [thisPerson mergeInfoFromPersonRef:iLinkedPerson];
        }
    }
    [self.addressBookDictionary setObject:thisPerson forKey:thisPerson.recordID];
    [thisPerson release];
    [linked release];
}
[linkedPersonsToSkip release];
[allPersonRecords release];