IOS Swift AddressBook Contacts - swift2

Question

I have A weird problem, I am trying to get all contacts from IOS addressbook API, while I am trying to get all the values of properties (First name, Last name, Emails and phone numbers of each contact I am g etting "fatal error: unexpectedly found nil while unwrapping an Optional value"), just when i run the the command on my device, but when I am running the command on the xcode simulator everything works fine?
here is my sample code:
func getContactNames() {
let people = ABAddressBookCopyArrayOfAllPeople(addressBook).takeRetainedValue() as NSArray
for person in people {
let firstName = ABRecordCopyValue(person,
kABPersonFirstNameProperty).takeRetainedValue() as! String
let lastName = ABRecordCopyValue(person,
kABPersonLastNameProperty).takeRetainedValue() as! String
let email: ABMultiValueRef = ABRecordCopyValue(person,kABPersonEmailProperty).takeRetainedValue()
println("First name = \(firstName)")
println("Last name = \(lastName)")
println("Email = \(email)")
}
}

Answer 1

You may find the problem is with your use of as! String. If any entries in your address book do not have a First Name or a Last Name, then you are attempting to retain a nil, hence the error.
My solution to this problem has been to use code like this:
public func stringPropertyValue(record: ABRecord, id:ABPropertyID) -> String! {
var result: String! = nil
if let v = ABRecordCopyValue(record, id) {
result = v.takeRetainedValue() as! String
}
return result
}
The you can set up variables like this:
let firstName = stringPropertyValue(person, id:kABPersonFirstNameProperty)
let lastName = stringPropertyValue(person, id:kABPersonLastNameProperty)
The resulting variables are implied optionals, but they won't cause the unwrapping errors. The above function can be easily reworked into a class structure along the lines of the new Contacts framework in iOS 9 / Xcode 7