The current react-native-contacts library uses the React Native Bridge to convert the native Java/Objective-C types to JavaScript values. This is asynchronous, batched, and serializes the huge contacts list in the native world (write into WritableArray/WritableMap, then let the Bridge convert to JSON), then deserializes it on the JavaScript side using JSON. It is therefore slow.

react-native-jsi-contacts uses JSI to be way faster.

• Direct invocation (no batching!)
• No JSON serialization happening
• Directly convert object into JSI Types
• Lazily get individual Contact fields (jsi::HostObject lazy-get)

⚠️ react-native-jsi-contacts only works on Android. If you want me to implement iOS support, consider funding the project.

The library uses almost the same native "getContacts()" function as react-native-contacts (minor tweaks to not use the Bridge types WritableArray/WritableMap), so the only difference is the conversion speed.

For 25 contacts, I have measured an average speed increase of ~35%, this greatly scales with the amount of contacts you have though.

 LOG  JSI: Contacts Permission: granted
 LOG  JSI: Got: 25 contacts in 55.14947900176048ms.
 LOG  Bridge: Contacts Permission: granted
 LOG  Bridge: Got: 25 contacts in 74.15260401368141ms.

For 25 contacts, the conversion between the native Java Contacts list and the JavaScript Contacts list takes only ~3 milliseconds!

1. Install using npm/yarn

   npm install react-native-jsi-contacts

2. Add this code:

   JsiContactsModule.install(reactApplicationContext);

   to your JSIModulePackage's getJSIModules method. See the react-native-mmkv installation guide on how to create a JSIModulePackage.

This project is sponsored by Galaxycard.

Get a list of all contacts:

import { getContactsAsync } from "react-native-jsi-contacts";

const contacts = await getContactsAsync();

Get a hashsum to compare for any changes in the contact book:

import { getHashAsync } from "react-native-jsi-contacts";
import { MMKV } from "react-native-mmkv";

const storage = new MMKV();

const hash = await getHashAsync();
const previousHash = storage.getString("contactsHash")
if (previousHash !== hash) {
  // get all contacts and reload hash now.
}

See the contributing guide to learn how to contribute to the repository and the development workflow.

MIT

• Thanks to GalaxyCard for sponsoring this project
• Thanks to react-native-contacts for the native "getContacts()" implementation