Open contact group on Mac

Question

I just want to use AppleScript to open an existing group in Mac Address Book (v7.1).

tell application "Contacts"
    set selected of group "friend" to true
    activate
end tell

above is the sample code for what I want.

Answer 1

This probably isn't the best Applescript code ever written but it did work for me to list the people in a specific group (on 10.8 mountain lion).

tell application "Contacts"
    activate
    set grp to first group where (name = "friend")
    tell grp
        get people
    end tell
end tell

Answer 2

Above script works only if the group with name 'friend' actually exists. Otherwise the statement 'set grp to first...' fails. Thus it is safer to write

tell application "Contacts"
  activate
  if group "friend" exists then
    set grp to first group where (name = "friend")
    tell grp
      get people
    end tell
  end if
end tell