Slightly OT: AppleScript to open Contact Address?

Getting Started
1

Well yes, in a way this question could be better placed in an AppleScript forum. But maybe some of you encountered a similar problem before:

Do you know if there is a way to open Mac OS’ Contacts and tell it to show a certain person retrieved from a Xojo app? I can read and add to Contacts and found out how to install and communicate with an AppleScript, but I cannot figure out how to “show” a certain entry – there seems to be no show command, and setting the selection to some properties doesn’t work. I try to avoid creating a complete contact window in Xojo when Contacts can do this fine, but currently it seems to me I’ll have to in order to show all the details – or is there another way to convince Contacts into cooperation?

As always a lot of thanks in advance!

2

Contacts (formerly Address Book) has a custom URL handler for the addressbook:// URI space.
I don’t recall the syntax to show a contact card but I believe you can find this in Apple Developer Library. If I remember properly, you must get the UniqueID of a person and use this in the URL.
I already used this in past (it’s working since Mac OS X 10.4 at least), and you don’t need AppleScript, just the ShowURL() method from Xojo. Additionally, I’m certain you can add a &edit parameter to the URL to show the contact card in edit mode.

3

Thanks for the hint, Massimo! That’s a clue I’ll follow soon.

4

To make the forum more workable as a programming dictionary (in case someone else searches for this topic), here’s the link to the URL scheme:

https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/AddressBook/Tasks/URLScheme.html

EDIT - I edited so everyone could SEE the URL

5

Hmm, but it doesn’t work for me. The following opens Contacts, but it will not show the currently selected person. Any ideas?

if CallData.CallerPhoneBookContact<>NIL then 
  dim s as string = "addressbook://%@"+CallData.CallerPhoneBookContact.UniqueID
  ShowURL(s)

end if

6

You don’t need to include the “%@“ in the string. This is the formatting placeholder for the NSString’s stringWithFormat method from which you copied (Objective-C language).

7

:smiley:

Did I write already I never got accustomed to C syntax?

Works like a charm without it. Thanks a lot, Massimo!