My question concerns markup that surrounds some of the default phone number labels in the Person entries of the Contact list on the iPhone.
I have created an iPhone contact list address book entry for a person, "John Smith" with the following phone number entries:
Mobile (604) 123-4567
iPhone (778) 123-4567
Home (604) 789-4561
Work (604) 456-7891
Main (604) 789-1234
megaphone (234) 567-8990
Note that the first five labels are default labels provided by the Contacts application and the last label, "megaphone", is a custom label.
I wrote the following method to retrieve and display the labels and phone numbers for each person in the address book:
-(void)displayPhoneNumbersForAddressBook {
ABAddressBookRef book = ABAddressBookCreate();
CFArrayRef people = ABAddressBookCopyArrayOfAllPeople(book);
ABRecordRef record = CFArrayGetValueAtIndex(people, 0);
ABMultiValueRef multi = ABRecordCopyValue(record, kABPersonPhoneProperty);
NSLog(@"---------" );
NSLog(@"displayPhoneNumbersForAddressBook" );
CFStringRef label, phone;
for (CFIndex i = 0; i < ABMultiValueGetCount(multi); ++i) {
label = ABMultiValueCopyLabelAtIndex(multi, i);
phone = ABMultiValueCopyValueAtIndex(multi, i);
NSLog(@"label: \"%@\" number: \"%@\"", (NSString*)label, (NSString*)phone);
CFRelease(label);
CFRelease(phone);
}
NSLog(@"---------" );
CFRelease(multi);
CFRelease(people);
CFRelease(book);
}
and here is the output for the address book entry that I entered:
2010-03-08 13:24:28.789 test2m[2479:207] ---------
2010-03-08 13:24:28.789 test2m[2479:207] displayPhoneNumbersForAddressBook
2010-03-08 13:24:28.790 test2m[2479:207] label: "_$!<Mobile>!$_" number: "(604) 123-4567"
2010-03-08 13:24:28.790 test2m[2479:207] label: "iPhone" number: "(778) 123-4567"
2010-03-08 13:24:28.791 test2m[2479:207] label: "_$!<Home>!$_" number: "(604) 789-4561"
2010-03-08 13:24:28.791 test2m[2479:207] label: "_$!<Work>!$_" number: "(604) 456-7891"
2010-03-08 13:24:28.792 test2m[2479:207] label: "_$!<Main>!$_" number: "(604) 789-1234"
2010-03-08 13:24:28.792 test2m[2479:207] label: "megaphone" number: "(234) 567-8990"
2010-03-08 13:24:28.793 test2m[2479:207] ---------
What are the markup characters
_$!< and >!$_
surrounding most, save for iPhone, of the default labels for?
Can you point me to where in the "Address Book Programming Guide for iPhone OS" I can find the information?
Thank you for your help.