Access email in EKParticipant/EKAttendee - ios

Question

I want to get the email address of the attendee of an event in the EKEventKit.
I have the following code:
if ( event.attendees.count > 0)
{
NSArray *people = event.attendees;
for(EKParticipant *person in people)
{
if ( person.participantType == EKParticipantTypePerson && person.URL.resourceSpecifier.length > 0)
{
NSString *dataString = [NSString stringWithFormat:#"event_id=%ld&name=%#&is_me=%d&email=%#&role=%#",event_id,person.name, person.isCurrentUser,person.URL.resourceSpecifier, #"attendee"];
//<DO SOMETHING USEFUL WITH dataString>;
}
}
}
When I run the code person populates with the following data:
EKAttendee <0x17809acc0> {UUID = 4F657EA4-452A-412B-A9AA-FEC5551DC096; name = A. Real Person; email = realperson#therightdomain.com; status = 0; role = 0; type = 1}
How to I access the email field?
I tried (as above) to use URL.resourceSpecifier, but that frequently is some strange string that is definitely NOT an email address.

Answer 1

The "Description" of the EKParticipant object is a property list of sorts. I tried several different methods of parsing that list into something containing key:value pairs unsuccessfully. So I wrote the following:
// This is re-useable code that converts any class description field into a dictionary that can be parsed for info
NSMutableDictionary *descriptionData = [NSMutableDictionary dictionary];
for (NSString *pairString in [person.description componentsSeparatedByString:#";"])
{
NSArray *pair = [pairString componentsSeparatedByString:#"="];
if ( [pair count] != 2)
continue;
[descriptionData setObject:[[pair objectAtIndex:1] stringByTrimmingCharactersInSet:[NSCharacterSet whitespaceAndNewlineCharacterSet]] forKey:[[pair objectAtIndex:0]stringByTrimmingCharactersInSet:[NSCharacterSet whitespaceAndNewlineCharacterSet]]];
}
With this I simply get the email address with
[descriptionData valueForKey:#"email"]

Answer 2

I tried to answer this same question in "how to get ekevent EKparticipant email?" thread:
What you need to do is use EKPrincipal:ABRecordWithAddressBook and then extract email from there. Like this:
NSString *email = nil;
ABAddressBookRef book = ABAddressBookCreateWithOptions(nil, nil);
ABRecordRef record = [self.appleParticipant ABRecordWithAddressBook:book];
if (record) {
ABMultiValueRef value = ABRecordCopyValue(record, kABPersonEmailProperty);
if (value
&& ABMultiValueGetCount(value) > 0) {
email = (__bridge id)ABMultiValueCopyValueAtIndex(value, 0);
}
}
Note that calling ABAddressBookCreateWithOptions is expensive so you might want to do that only once per session.
If you can't access the record, then fall back on URL.resourceSpecifier.

Answer 3

In Swift 4:
private static func getParticipantDescriptionData(_ participant: EKParticipant) -> [String:String] {
var descriptionData = [String: String]()
for pairString in participant.description.components(separatedBy: ";") {
let pair = pairString.components(separatedBy: "=")
if pair.count != 2 {
continue
}
descriptionData[pair[0].trimmingCharacters(in: .whitespacesAndNewlines)] =
pair[1].trimmingCharacters(in: .whitespacesAndNewlines)
}
return descriptionData
}