I started using Path, and noticed that in the registration process, they identified both my phone number and my email.
As far as I know, there is no way to programmatically get those values (without being rejected by apple), so how does path do it?
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Probably a duplicate of http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8000927/how-does-squares-cardcase-app-do-this/8058188#8058188 Hope this helps. – lwe Jan 09 '12 at 10:47
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@lwe yes it does look like they lookup your name in your contacts – rckoenes Jan 09 '12 at 10:49
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Yes, it was a big help. I noticed that they simply ask for you name, and then populate the registration screen only if you have a contact with this name. I just wonder if it's that frequent that people have a contact with their own name.. – adamsiton Jan 09 '12 at 10:50
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@adamsiton, mhh not sure, at least on MacOS X theres automatically a contact with my name, though can't recall the behavior on the iPhone, but it seems common. As an alternative you could also just display a contact picker, when the lookup by name fails or similar.In other apps, e.g. Whatsapp you've to enter your phone number AFAIK. – lwe Jan 10 '12 at 06:38
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Moving my comments into an answer :)
As I've stated above, this is a duplicate of How does Square's CardCase app automatically populate the user's details from the address book?
Because Path asks beforehand for the first and last name it's easy to search for the contact in the address book. Of course one has to handle the case when a) no contact or b) multiple contacts are found. In both this cases I'd probably go with standard input fields, because for the "no contact found" case you need those anyway.
How common it is to have a contact with it's own name I don't know, but according to the Fact that Path and other apps are doing it the same way I suppose it's worth taking the risk :) AFAIK MacOS X automatically creates a contact with my name in the Address Book, but really can't recall if iOS has the same behavior.
