An alternative interface for Mac Contacts (or Address Book)

[kaveh1000]

The Apple Mac Address Book (now renamed Contacts) is minimalistic, with very few options to view and to modify content. Examples of things I can't do are:

• Show content in a tabular view
• List groups assigned to a particular person
• Bulk edit selected contacts
• etc

So what I want to do is to write a LiveCode front end to do this with my own preferences. Ideally I want to use either the standard Contacts app, or the LiveCode one, and the data will be written to the same place. I would like advice on the following:

• Has anyone has done something similar as I do not reinvent the wheel. Any pointers appreciated.
• What is the best strategy? One approach is to import all data (around 4000 contacts) on the fly as soon as the LiveCode app opens. I have done some tests with AppleScript, and getting data with a loop from Contacts is quite slow. Looks like it is faster to grab all data in one go. Here is a reply to my question on the Apple forums: http://bit.ly/12T2sO9. My idea is that as soon as any data is modified in the LiveCode App, it writes to Contacts immediately. So there is only one data file.

Any ideas from the experts appreciated.

[Mark]

Hi,

The best strategy is to hook into the SQLite database directly. Someone has done this before, but this project is not available. You might encounter a problem, because your app needs write access to the database. I don't know if apps can get write access easily.

Kind regards,

Mark