How Can I use EWS to retrieve Outlook contacts?

Question

I want my outlook contacts to be displayed in a Grid View. How can Exchange webservice help me in that?

Answer 1

First off, grab EWS from NuGet:

Install-Package EWS-Api-2.0

Next, establish a connection to your Exchange server:

String username = "account@contoso.com";
String password = "mypassword";

ExchangeService ews = new ExchangeService();
ews.Credentials = new WebCredentials(username, password);

// If you have the Exchange URI, it's faster to provide it. However,
// if you don't you can auto-acquire it. User EITHER of the following:
ews.Url = new Url("https://exchange.server.com/ews/exchange.asmx"); // your own URL
ews.AutodiscoverUrl(username, x => {
  // here you can validate `x`. For testing purposes, allow all Urls
  return true;
});

Next, we grab the contacts:

// Contacts sit in the "contacts" folder
Folder contactsFolder = Folder.Bind(ews, WellKnownFolderName.Contacts);
// grab 100 entries at a time
ItemView itemView = new ItemView(100); // list 100 entries at a time
// retrieve first 100
FinditemsResults<item> items = contactsFolder.FindItems(itemView);

// iterate over the entries
foreach (var contact in items.OfType<Contact>())
{
    Console.WriteLine(contact.Id.UniqueId);
    Console.WriteLine("\t{0,-20}: {1}", "NickName", contact.NickName);
    Console.WriteLine("\t{0,-20}: {1}", "DisplayName", contact.DisplayName);
    Console.WriteLine("\t{0,-20}: {1}", "Email Address", contact.EmailAddresses[0]);
    Console.WriteLine();
}

From there, you can place the above in a loop and check items.MoreAvailable to see if you need to grab another 100 entries. Make sure to also provide the offset parameter to the ItemView on subsequent calls.