The getCategories method retrieves the list of a user's Address Book categories. For example, an application can call this method before calling addContacts in order to present a pull-down list box of categories to the user, so that the user can classify the contact that they are adding or merging to their address book.

The getCategories method is a read-only method; it can only be used by applications granted read access by a user.

The general format of the response produced by the getCategories method is as follows:

The following request gets a list of categories returned in JSON format:

The JSON formatted result:

The same request asks for the result in XML format:

The XML formatted result: