Access email in EKParticipant/EKAttendee

Question

I want to get the email address of the attendee of an event in the EKEventKit.

I have the following code:

if ( event.attendees.count > 0)
{
    NSArray *people = event.attendees;
    for(EKParticipant *person in people)
    {
        if ( person.participantType == EKParticipantTypePerson && person.URL.resourceSpecifier.length > 0)
        {
            NSString *dataString = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"event_id=%ld&name=%@&is_me=%d&email=%@&role=%@",event_id,person.name, person.isCurrentUser,person.URL.resourceSpecifier, @"attendee"];
            //<DO SOMETHING USEFUL WITH dataString>;
        }
    }
}

When I run the code person populates with the following data:

EKAttendee <0x17809acc0> {UUID = 4F657EA4-452A-412B-A9AA-FEC5551DC096; name = A. Real Person; email = realperson@therightdomain.com; status = 0; role = 0; type = 1}

How to I access the email field?

I tried (as above) to use URL.resourceSpecifier, but that frequently is some strange string that is definitely NOT an email address.

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Aug 13 '14 at 20:48

The "Description" of the EKParticipant object is a property list of sorts. I tried several different methods of parsing that list into something containing key:value pairs unsuccessfully. So I wrote the following:

                            // This is re-useable code that converts any class description field into a dictionary that can be parsed for info
                    NSMutableDictionary *descriptionData = [NSMutableDictionary dictionary];
                    for (NSString *pairString in [person.description componentsSeparatedByString:@";"])
                    {
                        NSArray *pair = [pairString componentsSeparatedByString:@"="];
                        if ( [pair count] != 2)
                            continue;
                        [descriptionData setObject:[[pair objectAtIndex:1] stringByTrimmingCharactersInSet:[NSCharacterSet whitespaceAndNewlineCharacterSet]] forKey:[[pair objectAtIndex:0]stringByTrimmingCharactersInSet:[NSCharacterSet whitespaceAndNewlineCharacterSet]]];
                    }

With this I simply get the email address with

    [descriptionData valueForKey:@"email"]

It works as expected, i was facing an issue in iOS 12 and unable to get email field, your code worked for me. — GvSharma, Sep 24 '18 at 11:12

score 1 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 11:51

1

I tried to answer this same question in "how to get ekevent EKparticipant email?" thread:

What you need to do is use EKPrincipal:ABRecordWithAddressBook and then extract email from there. Like this:

NSString *email = nil;
ABAddressBookRef book = ABAddressBookCreateWithOptions(nil, nil);
ABRecordRef record = [self.appleParticipant ABRecordWithAddressBook:book];
if (record) {
    ABMultiValueRef value = ABRecordCopyValue(record, kABPersonEmailProperty);
    if (value
        && ABMultiValueGetCount(value) > 0) {
        email = (__bridge id)ABMultiValueCopyValueAtIndex(value, 0);
    }
}

Note that calling ABAddressBookCreateWithOptions is expensive so you might want to do that only once per session.

If you can't access the record, then fall back on URL.resourceSpecifier.

edited May 23 '17 at 11:51

Community

1
1

answered Sep 13 '14 at 19:30

ierceg

418
1
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good answer,but when the participate is not in iPhone's addressbook,this record will be nil. – frank Aug 17 '15 at 06:19
@frank Thanks. Yes, this is in general an unreliable API. I think we finally settled on sending `emailAddress` selector (undocumented) to `appleParticipant`. – ierceg Aug 20 '15 at 11:28
@frank It shouldn't be dangerous (data loss, crashes, etc.) but it's definitely a dirty technique. – ierceg Aug 21 '15 at 12:27

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Jul 03 '18 at 09:12

In Swift 4:

private static func getParticipantDescriptionData(_ participant: EKParticipant) -> [String:String] {
  var descriptionData = [String: String]()
  for pairString in participant.description.components(separatedBy: ";") {
    let pair = pairString.components(separatedBy: "=")
    if pair.count != 2 {
      continue
    }
    descriptionData[pair[0].trimmingCharacters(in: .whitespacesAndNewlines)] =
      pair[1].trimmingCharacters(in: .whitespacesAndNewlines)
  }
  return descriptionData
}

Access email in EKParticipant/EKAttendee

3 Answers3