How to use ABPeoplePickerNavigationController in MonoTouch to pick a specific email address or phone number of a contact? - xamarin.ios

Question

I have been using the ABPeoplePickerNavigationController in a project, written in MonoTouch, to pick a specific email address or phone number of a contact.
The code set a delegate, and in the delegate I implemented the ShouldContinue method, and retrieved the contact using the Handle property of all contacts. Unfortunately, it looks like something changed, or that I used undocumented features, or that I was simply lucky, because now when I'm in the process of updating the app for iPhone 5, the code no longer works.
Edit: Ok, my initial thoughts was that this was caused by changes in MonoTouch, since there has been quite a few updates since I last worked on this app. However, I now removed it from my device and downloaded the version I have on the app store, and it crashes in the same manner, null reference exception.
This means it is an iOS upgrade that made my code non-functional.
The goal of my code:
Pick a person's specific email address, not just the person, but navigating into the details of the person, and selecting a specific email address or telephone number.
The below code deals with phone numbers only, the email code looks 95% similar.
Here is the code that constructs the picker:
var picker = new ABPeoplePickerNavigationController();
picker.Init();
picker.DisplayedProperties.Clear();
picker.DisplayedProperties.Add(ABPersonProperty.FirstName);
picker.DisplayedProperties.Add(ABPersonProperty.Phone);
var del = new PhonePickerDelegate();
picker.Delegate = del;
Here is the delegate class:
private class PhonePickerDelegate : ABPeoplePickerNavigationControllerDelegate
{
public override bool ShouldContinue(ABPeoplePickerNavigationController peoplePicker, IntPtr selectedPerson, int propertyId, int identifier)
{
peoplePicker.DismissModalViewControllerAnimated(true);
// THE NEXT LINE IS THE ONE THAT NO LONGER WORKS
var contact = peoplePicker.AddressBook.SingleOrDefault(s => s.Handle == selectedPerson) as ABPerson;
using (var phones = contact.GetPhones())
{
int index = phones.GetIndexForIdentifier(identifier);
var phone = phones.GetValues()[index];
var name = (contact.FirstName + " " + contact.MiddleName).Trim() + " " + contact.LastName;
Selected(name + ": " + phone);
}
return false;
}
public override void Cancelled(ABPeoplePickerNavigationController peoplePicker)
{
peoplePicker.DismissModalViewControllerAnimated(true);
}
}
Unfortunately this code no longer finds the correct contact, as none of the contacts has a Handle value that corresponds to the selectedPerson IntPtr value.
My questions are these:
How can I fix the above code?
Can I fix the above code?
Is there some other class/method/delegate/event or whatnot I should be using instead?

Answer 1

You could do something like the following:
Note that AppDelegate.navigation would be your current NavigationController
using MonoTouch.AddressBookUI;
using MonoTouch.AddressBook;
ABPeoplePickerNavigationController _contactController = new ABPeoplePickerNavigationController ();
AppDelegate.navigation.PresentViewController (_contactController, true, null);
_contactController.Cancelled += delegate {
AppDelegate.navigation.DismissViewController (true, null);
return;
};
_contactController.SelectPerson += delegate(object sender, ABPeoplePickerSelectPersonEventArgs e) {
_importedContact = e.Person;
AppDelegate.navigation.DismissViewController (true, delegate {
// What to do when you dismiss the picker here.
});
};
e.Person is only going to give you the whole contact. You would want to do something like:
e.Person.GetEmails().FirstOrDefault
Hope this helps