Taking contact information and putting it into a UITableView - objective-c

Question

I am creating an app where you press a button and it opens up your contacts list. You can then select the contact you want to add and it imports their name and email into the app. I currently have that information going into labels but I want to add it to a table view cell. How would I do this?
My Code:
.h:
#import <UIKit/UIKit.h>
#import <AddressBookUI/AddressBookUI.h>
#interface FirstViewController : UIViewController <ABPeoplePickerNavigationControllerDelegate>
- (IBAction)showPicker:(id)sender;
#property (weak, nonatomic) IBOutlet UILabel *firstName;
#property (weak, nonatomic) IBOutlet UILabel *email;
#end
.m:
#import "FirstViewController.h"
#interface FirstViewController ()
#end
#implementation FirstViewController
#synthesize firstName;
#synthesize email;
- (void)viewDidLoad
{
[super viewDidLoad];
// Do any additional setup after loading the view, typically from a nib.
}
- (void)didReceiveMemoryWarning
{
[super didReceiveMemoryWarning];
// Dispose of any resources that can be recreated.
}
- (IBAction)showPicker:(id)sender {
ABPeoplePickerNavigationController *picker =
[[ABPeoplePickerNavigationController alloc] init];
picker.peoplePickerDelegate = self;
[self presentModalViewController:picker animated:YES];
}
- (void)peoplePickerNavigationControllerDidCancel:
(ABPeoplePickerNavigationController *)peoplePicker
{
[self dismissModalViewControllerAnimated:YES];
}
- (BOOL)peoplePickerNavigationController:
(ABPeoplePickerNavigationController *)peoplePicker
shouldContinueAfterSelectingPerson:(ABRecordRef)person {
[self displayPerson:person];
[self dismissModalViewControllerAnimated:YES];
return NO;
}
- (BOOL)peoplePickerNavigationController:
(ABPeoplePickerNavigationController *)peoplePicker
shouldContinueAfterSelectingPerson:(ABRecordRef)person
property:(ABPropertyID)property
identifier:(ABMultiValueIdentifier)identifier
{
return NO;
}
- (void)displayPerson:(ABRecordRef)person
{
NSString* name = (__bridge_transfer NSString*)ABRecordCopyValue(person,
kABPersonFirstNameProperty);
self.firstName.text = name;
ABMultiValueRef emails = ABRecordCopyValue(person, kABPersonEmailProperty);
NSString *emailId = (__bridge NSString *)ABMultiValueCopyValueAtIndex(emails, 0);//0 for "Home Email" and 1 for "Work Email".
self.email.text = emailId;
}
#end

Answer 1

OK, I am going to explain how you programmatically implement a very basic table view controller. It will be up to you, though, to figure out how to integrate this into your application.
Let's start with the header file, let's call it MyTableViewController.h:
#interface MyTableViewController : UIViewController <UITableViewDelegate, UITableViewDataSource>
{
}
#end
As you can see, your controller class adopts the protocols UITableViewDelegate and UITableViewDataSource.
Now let's look at a first snippet from the implementation file MyTableViewController.m. Your first job, obviously, is to create the controller's view. You do this in your controller's loadView method. If you want to learn more about the view life cycle and how to program a UIViewController I suggest you read the UIViewController class reference and the accompanying View Controller Programming Guide.
- (void) loadView
{
// Give the view some more or less arbitrary initial size. It will be
// resized later when it is actually displayed
CGRect tableViewFrame = CGRectMake(0, 0, 320, 200);
UITableView* tableView = [[[UITableView alloc] initWithFrame:tableViewFrame style:UITableViewStyleGrouped] autorelease];
self.view = tableView;
// Here we make sure that the table view will take as much horizontal
// and vertical space as it can get when it is resized.
UIViewAutoresizing autoresizingMask = (UIViewAutoresizingFlexibleWidth | UIViewAutoresizingFlexibleHeight);
tableView.autoresizingMask = autoresizingMask;
// We need to tell the table view that we are both its delegate and
// its data source.
tableView.delegate = self;
tableView.dataSource = self;
}
Just to let you know: You can omit loadView entirely if your controller is a subclass of UITableViewController, but I deliberately do not take that shortcut so that I can show you how a table view needs a delegate and a data source. Most important ist the data source.
In the next snippet in MyTableViewController.m we are going to implement some basic UITableViewDataSource methods. For this you need to understand how a table view is structured: A table view is divided into sections, and each section has a number of cells. The point of having sections is to visually separate groups of cells, with an optional section header or footer. I am not going into details here, though, to keep this simple.
- (NSInteger) numberOfSectionsInTableView:(UITableView*)tableView
{
// Let's keep it simple: We want just one section
return 1;
}
- (NSInteger) tableView:(UITableView*)tableView numberOfRowsInSection:(NSInteger)section
{
// Let's keep it simple: We want just one row, or table view cell.
// Since we only have one section (see above) we don't have to look
// at the section parameter.
return 1;
}
And now, finally, the centerpiece where you create your table view cell. Again, this is a UITableViewDataSource method that we implement. Note that we do not need to inspect the indexPath parameter only because we know that we only have one section and one row. In a real world application you will probably have to write switch-case or if-else statements that examine indexPath.section and indexPath.row so that you can distinguish between the different cells you need to create.
- (UITableViewCell*) tableView:(UITableView*)tableView cellForRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath*)indexPath
{
// This is very important for your future table view implementations:
// Always ask the table view first if it already has a cell in its
// cache. If you don't do this your table view will become slow when
// it has many cells.
NSString* identifier = #"MyTableViewCell";
UITableViewCell* cell = [tableView dequeueReusableCellWithIdentifier:identifier];
if (cell == nil)
{
// Aha, the table view didn't have a cell in its cache, so we must
// create a new one. We use UITableViewCellStyleValue1 so that the
// cell can display two pieces of information.
cell = [[[UITableViewCell alloc] initWithStyle:UITableViewCellStyleValue1 reuseIdentifier:identifier] autorelease];
}
// Regardless of whether we got the cell from the table view's cache
// or create a new cell, we must now fill it with content.
// First, obtain the information about the person from somewhere...
NSString* personName = ...;
NSString* personEmail = ...;
// ... then add the information to the table cell
cell.textLabel.text = personName;
cell.detailTextLabel.text = personEmail;
return cell;
}
As a final nicety, we implement a UITableViewDelegate method:
- (void) tableView:(UITableView*)tableView didSelectRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath*)indexPath
{
[tableView deselectRowAtIndexPath:indexPath animated:NO];
// Here you can react to the user tapping on the cell. If you
// don't want the user to be able to select a cell you can
// add the following line to tableView:cellForRowAtIndexPath:
// cell.selectionStyle = UITableViewCellSelectionStyleNone;
}
It is difficult to tell how you should integrate this into your application. It all depends where you want to display the table view. Since you say you want to replace the two labels you already have, one possible approach could be this:
In Interface Builder, add the table view as a subview to the main view of your FirstViewController
Add an outlet to FirstViewController that you connect to the table view
Let FirstViewController adopt the protocols UITableViewDelegate and UITableViewDataSource
Connect FirstViewController to the delegate and data source outlets of the table view
Don't implement loadView from my example, you don't need it, you already have made all the connections etc. in Interface Builder
If you need further help with integration, I suggest that you ask a new question and possibly refer to this answer. Good luck.