A database of contact items.

Contact items can be added to and removed from the database and items in the database can be opened or read. To edit an item, it must first be opened. Changes to the item can then be committed using CommitContactL() (committing can only take place to an open item).

If the available disk space is less than 128 kilobytes then changes to the contact database cannot be started, and methods such as CreateL() or CommitContactL() will leave with a KErrDiskFull error. Less obviously OpenL() can also fail with KErrDiskFull when trying to update the system template.

Each item has an access count. An item cannot be fully deleted unless its access count is zero. This is to prevent items which have been synchronised with another contacts application from being deleted. Also, if the item is a template, it cannot be deleted if other items are based on it.

More than one contact database can exist on a phone, but there is a default contact database. Its filename is contacts.cdb. It can be moved between drives.

CContactDatabase implements searching and sorting and also provides separate phone number matching functions. These provide a fast way of indexing and looking up phone numbers, e.g. for looking up caller IDs on incoming calls.

The database owns speed dial information. This is a mapping between a single digit integer and a telephone number. There may be up to 9 speed dial telephone numbers; each of them belongs to a contact item in the database. If a contact item is deleted, its speed dial mapping is removed.

The following functions defined in class CContactDatabase are not supported. If called, they leave with KErrNotSupported.