ABAddressBookRequestAccessWithCompletion iOS 7 and semaphores - ios

Question

this code has been posted before, and been used as well, from what i could gather. i'm in a situation where i need the code to NOT continue until i know if i have access to the contacts.
on Xcode 5.0.2 and iOS 6, this works just fine. on iOS 7, it hangs forever, and then when i kill the app the dialog box comes up asking to allow access to the contacts.
ABAddressBookRef addressBook = ABAddressBookCreate();
__block BOOL accessGranted = NO;
if (ABAddressBookRequestAccessWithCompletion != NULL) { // we're on iOS 6
dispatch_semaphore_t sema = dispatch_semaphore_create(0);
ABAddressBookRequestAccessWithCompletion(addressBook, ^(bool granted, CFErrorRef error) {
accessGranted = granted;
dispatch_semaphore_signal(sema);
});
dispatch_semaphore_wait(sema, DISPATCH_TIME_FOREVER);
}
else { // we're on iOS 5 or older
accessGranted = YES;
}
in trying to play with this, i then simply set a BOOL to be NO, and then set it to YES within the block. after the block, i put a while loop that checked for the variable being YES, then slept for 1 second. works perfectly fine on 6, on 7 i never reach the NSLog statement in the block, and i'm stuck forever in the while loop printing the log statement.
am i doing something really lame here? or is this method gone haywire on 7?
ABAddressBookRef addressBook = ABAddressBookCreateWithOptions(NULL, &error);
ABAddressBookRequestAccessWithCompletion(addressBook, ^(bool granted, CFErrorRef error) {
if (granted)
{
self.myAddressBook = addressBook;
}
done = YES;
NSLog(#"in block, done is %#", done ? #"YES" : #"NO");
didGrant = granted;
//dispatch_semaphore_signal(sema);
});
while (!done)
{
NSLog(#"done is %#", done ? #"YES" : #"NO");
sleep(1);
}

Answer 1

I had the same problem, and I realised that the Dialog box that requests access to the contacts blocks the app anyways, so maybe there's a deadlock. So I just ditched the semaphores and did something like this (tested and works on iOS 7.1.1):
ABAddressBookRef addressBook = ABAddressBookCreate();
MyController * __weak weakSelf = self;
if (ABAddressBookRequestAccessWithCompletion != NULL)
{ // we're on iOS 6
if (ABAddressBookGetAuthorizationStatus() == kABAuthorizationStatusNotDetermined)
{
ABAddressBookRequestAccessWithCompletion(addressBook, ^(bool granted, CFErrorRef error) {
dispatch_async(dispatch_get_main_queue(), ^{
[weakSelf accessGrantedForAddressBook];
});
});
}
else
if (ABAddressBookGetAuthorizationStatus() == kABAuthorizationStatusAuthorized); //Maybe add something here to handle kABAuthorizationStatusRestricted
[self accessGrantedForAddressBook];
}
}
else // we're on iOS 5 or older
[self accessGrantedForAddressBook];
which is quite similar to what Apple does in their documentation (search for ABAddressBookRequestAccessWithCompletion). Besides, what's the point of ABAddressBookRequestAccessWithCompletion being asynchronous and waiting for it (see here)..