Question

My method of programmatically retrieving e-mail addresses from the Address Book no longer seems to work on iOS 6 devices. It worked in iOS 5 and oddly, still works in the iOS 6 Simulator. Is there a new way to programmatically retrieve contacts from a users’ Address Book?

ABAddressBookRef addressBook = ABAddressBookCreate();
CFArrayRef allPeople = ABAddressBookCopyArrayOfAllPeople(addressBook);
CFIndex nPeople = ABAddressBookGetPersonCount(addressBook);

self.contacts = [[NSMutableArray alloc] init];

int contactIndex = 0;
for (int i = 0; i < nPeople; i++) {
    // Get the next address book record.
    ABRecordRef record = CFArrayGetValueAtIndex(allPeople, i);        

    // Get array of email addresses from address book record.
    ABMultiValueRef emailMultiValue = ABRecordCopyValue(record, kABPersonEmailProperty);
    NSArray *emailArray = (__bridge_transfer NSArray *)ABMultiValueCopyArrayOfAllValues(emailMultiValue);

    [self.contacts addObject:emailArray];
}

To clarify, the above does not crash, it simply returns no results. ABAddressBookCopyArrayOfAllPeople is empty. Thanks!

Answer 1

Probably related to the new privacy controls—as of iOS 6, on the device, an app can’t access the user’s contacts without their permission. From the documentation:

On iOS 6.0 and later, if the caller does not have access to the
Address Book database:

• For apps linked against iOS 6.0 and later, this function returns NULL.

• For apps linked against previous version of iOS, this function returns an empty read-only database.

If you haven’t seen the permissions alert come up (“SomeApp would like access to your contacts”), it’s possible that the direct address-book APIs just assume that they don’t have access and silently fail; you might have to display something from the AddressBookUI framework to trigger it.