storing addressbook contacts into a nsdictionary

Question

I'm still trying to wrap my head around using NSDictionaries, and have come into a situation where I believe I need to use one. essentially, I would like to store all the phone numbers associated with each contact into a dictionary. so far I have this:

ABAddressBookRef addressBook = ABAddressBookCreate();
NSArray *thePeople = (NSArray *)ABAddressBookCopyArrayOfAllPeople(addressBook); 
for (id person in thePeople)
{
    ABMultiValueRef phones =(NSString*)ABRecordCopyValue(person, kABPersonPhoneProperty);
    NSString* name = (NSString *)ABRecordCopyCompositeName(person); 
    for (CFIndex i = 0; i < ABMultiValueGetCount(phones); i++)
    {
        NSString *phone = [(NSString *)ABMultiValueCopyValueAtIndex(phones,i) autorelease];
    }
}

I was wondering how to use a nsdictionary to store each person, and then an array of each phone value that's associated with that person.

Answer 1

What are you trying to do?

You can put all names and phonenumbers into a plist like this:

ABAddressBookRef addressBook = ABAddressBookCreate();
NSArray *thePeople = (NSArray *)ABAddressBookCopyArrayOfAllPeople(addressBook);
NSMutableArray* allPeoplesDicts = [NSMutableArray array];
for (id person in thePeople)
{
    ABMultiValueRef phones =(NSString*)ABRecordCopyValue(person, kABPersonPhoneProperty);
    NSString* name = (NSString *)ABRecordCopyCompositeName(person);
    NSMutableArray* phones = [[NSMutableArray alloc] init];
    for (CFIndex i = 0; i < ABMultiValueGetCount(phones); i++)
    {
        NSString *phone = [(NSString *)ABMultiValueCopyValueAtIndex(phones,i) autorelease];
        [phones addObject:phone];
    }
    NSDictionary* personDict = [[NSDictionary alloc] initWithObjectsAndKeys:name,@"Name",phones,@"PhoneNumbers",nil];
    [phones release];
    [allPeoplesDicts addObject:personDict];
    [personDict release];
}