This document summarizes the structure and usage of the Android Contacts Provider for syncing and accessing contact data. It describes the key tables in the Contacts Provider - ContactsContract.Contacts, ContactsContract.RawContacts and ContactsContract.Data. It explains how raw contacts from different sources like Google and Facebook are aggregated into contacts and how applications can query, modify and determine changes to contact data through the Contacts Provider API.

1. Using contact information,
accounts sync and data submission
model in Android
Alexey Potapov

2. • Introduction to Contacts Provider
Structure and Sync Accounts
• Data Modification, Contacts Provider
Access and Data Consistency
• Determination changes

3. Contacts Provider Structure
• ContactsContract.Contacts
• ContactsContract.RawContacts
• ContactsContract.Data

4. ContactsContract.RawContacts
• Sources of raw contacts data
o Google
o Facebook
o etc.
• Important raw contact columns
o ACCOUNT_NAME
o ACCOUNT_TYPE

5. ContactsContract.Data
• Important raw contact columns
• Generic column names
o Data1 , … , Data16
• Type-specific column names
o CommonDataKinds.Photo
o CommonDataKinds.Email
o etc.

6. ContactsContract.Contacts
• Neither applications nor
sync adapters are allowed
to add contacts
• Contact is representation
of RawContacts
aggregation

7. Contacts Provider Metadata
• ContactsContract.RawContacts.DIRTY
• ContactsContract.RawContacts.VERSION
• ContactsContract.RawContacts.SOURCE_ID
• ContactsContract.RawContacts.DELETED
• ContactsContract.Data.DATA_VERSION

8. Contacts Provider Access and Data
Consistency
• Contacts Aggregation
• Query contacts and data
• Batch modification

9. Contacts Aggregation
ID=1
Join ID=3
ID=1 ID=1
ID=2
ID=2 ID=2
ID=3 ID=1
Separate
ID=4 ID=2

10. Query contacts and data
• Lookup Key vs. Contact ID
Uri.withAppendedPath(ContactsContract.Contacts.CONTENT_URI,
String.valueOf(mId));
ContactsContract.Contacts.getLookupUri(mId, mLookupKey);
• Query entities API 11
Uri.withAppendedPath(mContactUri,
ContactsContract.Contacts.Entity.CONTENT_DIRECTORY);

11. Batch modification
• Yield points
o to prevent blocking the system
• Modification back references
o to use result of a previous operation
• Optimistic concurrency control
o modification of database without having to lock
the underlying repository

12. Determination changes
• ContentObserver
o onChange(boolean selfChange)
o onChange(boolean selfChange, Uri uri) API 16
• Check db modifications by query
o What we have?
o What we want?

13. Short example
SELECT * FROM raw_contacts
WHERE
id||‘.’||contact_id||’.’
||version
NOT IN (?)
SELECT * FROM data
WHERE
id||‘.’||data_version
NOT IN (?)
? starred, etc.

14. Questions ?
© Alexey Potapov