Launch the Details page for a specific contact in WP8

Question

On Twitter, Justin Angel alluded to being able to work around a known Windows Phone SDK limitation where you cannot launch a ShowContactTask that would display the details for a given contact (vote to fix this issue here). I threw together a test on my own to try to get this working, but it only displays a blank page with the user's name.

Any chance someone has an example of how to make this work?

Thanks in advance!

JustinAngel · Accepted Answer

As I said on twitter WP8 doesn't allow to launch the contact details either from a customized launcher task or via an app2app custom protocol.

The people hub does support importing vCards in a screen very similar to the contact details screen. You can use this feature primarily to import vCards or optionally to show contact details (even though it'll show up as a new contact). Here's the vCard app2app file association for the people hub:

  
    
      
        res://ContactsRes{ScreenResolution}!VCard.FileTypeIcon.Small.png
        res://ContactsRes{ScreenResolution}!VCard.FileTypeIcon.Medium.png
        res://ContactsRes{ScreenResolution}!VCard.FileTypeIcon.Large.png
      
      
          .vcf
          .vcf

In order to use this app2app custom protocol we can write up some code that creates a vCard VCF file, saves it to IsoStore and launches the vCard in the people hub.

private void MainPage_Loaded(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
    var contacts = new Contacts();
    contacts.SearchCompleted += contacts_SearchCompleted;
    contacts.SearchAsync(string.Empty, FilterKind.None, null);
}

private async void contacts_SearchCompleted(object sender, ContactsSearchEventArgs e)
{
    // get a Contact and build a vCard for it
    Contact contact = e.Results.First();
    string vcard = GetContactVCard(contact);
    Debug.WriteLine(vcard);

    // write the vCard to IsoStore as a VCF file
    using (var s = IsolatedStorageFile.GetUserStoreForApplication().CreateFile("myContact.vcf"))
    using (var sw = new StreamWriter(s))
    {
        sw.Write(vcard);
    }

    // launch the VCF file 
    var vcardStorageFile = await ApplicationData.Current.LocalFolder.GetFileAsync("myContact.vcf");
    Launcher.LaunchFileAsync(vcardStorageFile);
}

Next we'll have to implement the function that builds a vCard. We'll use a vCard version 3.0 since we need Base64 embedded images (more on that later). I copied the vCard 3.0 format from Wikipedia so this example doesn't have any of the Microsoft specific extensions. I just copied the vCard into the code and poured in some data from the Contact class.

    private string GetContactVCard(Contact contact)
        {
            return string.Format(@"BEGIN:VCARD
VERSION:3.0
N:{0};{1}
FN:{2}
ORG:{3}
TITLE:{4}
PHOTO;TYPE=PNG;ENCODING=B:{9}
TEL;TYPE=WORK,VOICE:{5}
TEL;TYPE=HOME,VOICE:{6}
ADR;TYPE=WORK:;;{10}
ADR;TYPE=HOME:;;{11}
EMAIL;TYPE=PREF,INTERNET:{7}
REV:{8}
END:VCARD",
          contact.CompleteName.LastName,
          contact.CompleteName.FirstName,
          contact.DisplayName,
          contact.Companies.Any() ? contact.Companies.First().CompanyName : string.Empty,
          contact.CompleteName.Title,
          contact.PhoneNumbers.Any(p => p.Kind == PhoneNumberKind.Work) ? contact.PhoneNumbers.First(p => p.Kind == PhoneNumberKind.Work).PhoneNumber : string.Empty,
          contact.PhoneNumbers.Any(p => p.Kind != PhoneNumberKind.Work) ? contact.PhoneNumbers.First(p => p.Kind != PhoneNumberKind.Work).PhoneNumber : string.Empty,
          contact.EmailAddresses.Any() ? contact.EmailAddresses.First().EmailAddress : string.Empty,
          DateTime.Now.ToFileTimeUtc(),
          GetPhotoBase64(contact),
          contact.Addresses.Any(a => a.Kind == AddressKind.Home) ? BuildAddress(contact.Addresses.First(a => a.Kind == AddressKind.Home).PhysicalAddress) : string.Empty,
          contact.Addresses.Any(a => a.Kind == AddressKind.Work) ? BuildAddress(contact.Addresses.First(a => a.Kind == AddressKind.Work).PhysicalAddress) : string.Empty
            );
        }

You can see that I didn't spend too much time perfecting this logic. It might be best if you added some edge condition handling and maybe move to a StringBuilder. Next we'll build the somewhat more complex address string:

private string BuildAddress(CivicAddress physicalAddress)
{
    StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();

    string[] address = new string[]
                       {
                           physicalAddress.AddressLine1,
                           physicalAddress.AddressLine2,
                           physicalAddress.City + " " + physicalAddress.StateProvince,
                           physicalAddress.CountryRegion,
                           physicalAddress.PostalCode
                       };

    foreach (var line in address)
        if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(line))
            sb.Append(line + ";");

    return sb.ToString();
}

And finally we'll need to embed images as part of our vCard. We're embedding contact photos in base64 since WP8 doesn't have a URL we can use for that contact's photo.

private string GetPhotoBase64(Contact contact)
{
    using (var picture = contact.GetPicture())
    {
        if (picture == null)
        {
            return null;
        }
        else
        {
            using (var sr = new StreamReader(picture))
            {
                byte[] data = new byte[picture.Length];
                picture.Read(data, 0, data.Length);
                return Convert.ToBase64String(data);
            }
        }
    }
}

When we run this code snippet we can see it carries over most of the details of a Contact's properties into the exported/imported vCard:

vCard import - screen #1 vCard import - screen #2

Launch the Details page for a specific contact in WP8

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