How to access contacts list in Windows Phone 7?

Question

How do you access the contacts store (the contact list) within Windows Phone 7?

Thanks!

update: It seems that this might be available in the next version of WP7, Mango:

Link

Answer 1

EDIT: This answer was correct at the time of posting. In Windows Phone 7.1 (Mango) third-party applications will have access to contacts.

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You can't. You're not allowed to. That's viewed as private data that applications shouldn't be touching.

EDIT: Although you can't directly access the contacts list, you can launch the EmailAddressChooserTask or PhoneNumberChooserTask to get back just that piece of information about a user-specified contact. (Likewise you can launch a task to save a phone number or email address.)

Answer 2

There is a official Walkthrough at Microsoft especially for Mango Beta 2.

Windows Phone SDK 7.1 Beta 2 gives you read-only access to the user’s contact data, aggregated across the user's different accounts.

Only possible way to save new details to a contact is via the Launchers:

• SaveEmailAddressTask
• SavePhoneNumberTask
• SaveContactTask (which is new to Mango Beta 2)

For read only you can use:

• PhoneNumberChooserTask
• EmailAddressChooserTask
• AddressChooserTask (which is new to Mango Beta 1)

If you want to query the whole contact list, you will need LINQ.