Can't Access Contacts Sources on Device in iOS 6

Question

This code worked OK on iOS 5.1 and also does work in the iPhone simulator with iOS 6. It fails silently on my iPhone 4 running iOS 6. The end result is that I cannot add a per

Answer 1

I had the same issue and I could not get the Allow Access To Contacts alert to popup.

The Answer was posted by Kyle here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/12648938/480415

  // Request authorization to Address Book
  ABAddressBookRef addressBookRef = ABAddressBookCreateWithOptions(NULL, NULL);

  if (ABAddressBookGetAuthorizationStatus() == kABAuthorizationStatusNotDetermined) {
    ABAddressBookRequestAccessWithCompletion(addressBookRef, ^(bool granted, CFErrorRef error) {
          // First time access has been granted, add the contact
    });
  }
  else if (ABAddressBookGetAuthorizationStatus() == kABAuthorizationStatusAuthorized) {
        // The user has previously given access, add the contact
  }
  else {
        // The user has previously denied access
        // Send an alert telling user to change privacy setting in settings app
  }

Answer 2

This log message is an indication that your app is not (maybe not yet) allowed to access Contacts. iOS 6 gives users the possibility to deny apps the permission to access the address book.

The message disappears once the user has allowed your app access to Contacts - either via the pop up dialog, or by going to Settings -> Privacy -> Contacts.

For more infos on this topic, see WWDC 2012 session 710 "Privacy support in iOS and OS X".

Answer 3

If you got here from Google and you're using iOS's new CNContactStore framework, and getting these errors, read on:

I thought it'd be cleaner to make my CNContactStore a member variable that was initialized with the class instance:

class foo {
    var contactStore = CNContactStore()

    func findByIdentifier(identifier: String) -> CNContact {
        let contact = try self.contactStore.unifiedContactWithIdentifier(identifier...
        return contact
    }
}

After I called this about fifty times, it started erroring out with

AB: Could not compile statement for query (ABCCopyArrayOfAllInstancesOfClassInSourceMatchingProperties)

I tried rate-limiting my calls, but that didn't help. It turned out that instantiating a new CNContactStore for every call had zero performance ramifications and completely solved the problem for me:

class foo {

    func findByIdentifier(identifier: String) -> CNContact {
        let contactStore = CNContactStore()
        let contact = try contactStore.unifiedContactWithIdentifier(identifier...
        return contact
    }
}

Hope this helps!