How to read contacts on Android 2.0

Question

I'm working on Android 2.0 and am trying to receive a list of all contacts.

Since android.provider.Contacts.People is deprecated, I have to use android.provider.ContactsContract, But I can't find a proper example of how to use it (ex: retrieve a list of all contacts on the phonebook).

Anyone knows where to find such an example?

Answer 1

First, ensure that you have added

<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.READ_CONTACTS"/>

to your AndroidManifest.xml file, then you can loop through your phone contacts like this:

Cursor cursor = getContentResolver().query(ContactsContract.Contacts.CONTENT_URI,null, null, null, null); 
while (cursor.moveToNext()) { 
   String contactId = cursor.getString(cursor.getColumnIndex( 
   ContactsContract.Contacts._ID)); 
   String hasPhone = cursor.getString(cursor.getColumnIndex(ContactsContract.Contacts.HAS_PHONE_NUMBER)); 
   if (Boolean.parseBoolean(hasPhone)) { 
      // You know it has a number so now query it like this
      Cursor phones = getContentResolver().query( ContactsContract.CommonDataKinds.Phone.CONTENT_URI, null, ContactsContract.CommonDataKinds.Phone.CONTACT_ID +" = "+ contactId, null, null); 
      while (phones.moveToNext()) { 
         String phoneNumber = phones.getString(phones.getColumnIndex( ContactsContract.CommonDataKinds.Phone.NUMBER));                 
      } 
      phones.close(); 
   }

   Cursor emails = getContentResolver().query(ContactsContract.CommonDataKinds.Email.CONTENT_URI, null, ContactsContract.CommonDataKinds.Email.CONTACT_ID + " = " + contactId, null, null); 
   while (emails.moveToNext()) { 
      // This would allow you get several email addresses 
      String emailAddress = emails.getString( 
      emails.getColumnIndex(ContactsContract.CommonDataKinds.Email.DATA)); 
   } 
   emails.close();
}
cursor.close(); 

Additionally, you can loop through your contacts and simply get the name and phone number like this:

Cursor people = getContentResolver().query(ContactsContract.Contacts.CONTENT_URI, null, null, null, null);

while(people.moveToNext()) {
   int nameFieldColumnIndex = people.getColumnIndex(PhoneLookup.DISPLAY_NAME);
   String contact = people.getString(nameFieldColumnIndex);
   int numberFieldColumnIndex = people.getColumnIndex(PhoneLookup.NUMBER);
   String number = people.getString(numberFieldColumnIndex);
}

people.close();

Furthermore, if you need to get things like notes from a contact then you will need to use a different URI, like the following (feel free to use this method):

private String getNote(long contactId) { 
   String note = null; 
   String[] columns = new String[] { ContactsContract.CommonDataKinds.Note.NOTE }; 
   String where = ContactsContract.Data.RAW_CONTACT_ID + " = ? AND " + ContactsContract.Data.MIMETYPE + " = ?"; 
   String[] whereParameters = new String[]{Long.toString(contactId), ContactsContract.CommonDataKinds.Note.CONTENT_ITEM_TYPE}; 
   Cursor contacts = getContentResolver().query(ContactsContract.Data.CONTENT_URI, projection, where, whereParameters, null); 
   if (contacts.moveToFirst()) { 
      rv = contacts.getString(0); 
   } 
   contacts.close(); 
   return note; 
} 

Notice this time I used not only the contact id but the mime type for the query.

Answer 2

This part wouldn't work for me:

 while (phones.moveToNext()) { 
     String phoneNumber = phones.getString( 
       phones.getColumnIndex( 
         ContactsContract.CommonDataKinds.Phone.NUMBER));                 
    } 

If I use this, though, it does:

 while (phones.moveToNext()) { 
                                  String pdata = phones.getString(phones.getColumnIndex(ContactsContract.CommonDataKinds.Phone.DATA));
                                  Log.v("DATA",pdata);
}

Answer 3

Just want to add, when you are retrieving the contacts you might get a lot of "garbage" contacts - for example some email addresses that a user has at some point send an email to, but are not aggregated... If you want only the contacts visible to the user, as in the Androids own contacts application you need to restrict the selection to only IN_VISIBLE_GROUP.

    String where = ContactsContract.Contacts.IN_VISIBLE_GROUP + "= ? ";
    String[] selectionArgs = new String[] { "1" };