Re: Should I add properties to ABPerson?
Re: Should I add properties to ABPerson?
- Subject: Re: Should I add properties to ABPerson?
- From: Hamish Allan <email@hidden>
- Date: Tue, 24 May 2005 10:39:19 +0100
On Mon, 23 May 2005 16:38:04 -0400, Guy English
<email@hidden> wrote:
I've written an app that add properties to the AddressBook
ABPerson records. Properties like Keywords and Labels. They are only
used for my application and it's not really expected that other apps
would need to access them, although it'd be nice if they could.
If it would make good sense for other applications to access them,
the Address Book seems like a good candidate to me. (But see below.)
I have a few concerns with this approach. Firstly it takes a
significant amount of time to add the properties during the inital run
of the application. This isn't a big deal since I can handle it
reasonably in the UI but it's a bit annoying. Second ABPerson
removeProperties isn't implemened yet. So, once added, those
properties are going to be there for a long time. ( I've filed an
enhancement request to get that fixed ). Third is that I haven't seen
any other apps do this despite it seeming like a useful method of
attaching data to people. Delicious Library, for example, uses it's
own data store even though using the Address Book would make sense for
them.
This third reason is probably related to the first two.
On the positive side I believe that these custom fields will be
synched at the same time the Address Book is without me doing any work
- which is nice.
I'd be cautious about that belief, given that the same framework
isn't even implementing removeProperties yet.
Does anyone have any insight as to weather I should do this or
simply manage my own data store? Would you, as a user, be annoyed that
my app played with your Address Book data base?
I think I would, if there weren't any way to remove those items.
What I, as a user, like to be able to do, is to remove all traces of
ever having installed an application if I so desire. However, this
slightly conflicts with the purpose of having a central data store
like the Address Book. If the properties you add could genuinely be
useful outside of the context of your application -- if you could
imagine putting them into Address Book.app (something like "Name of
Spouse" I could, but "ISBN number of books lent to them" perhaps not)
-- I would say it would be all right to add them, but maybe not until
the framework allows for their removal.
Best wishes,
Hamish
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