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Telephony.Sms.Inbox.PERSON uses deprecated Contacts.People._ID

Bounty Award - The bounty will be awarded to an answer that gets from a populated Telephony.Sms.Inbox.PERSON value, to the associated Contact using only ContractsContact tables.
I'm reading SMS messages in the standard way in my application:
final String[] projection = {Telephony.Sms.Inbox.BODY,
Telephony.Sms.Inbox.ADDRESS,
Telephony.Sms.Inbox.READ,
Telephony.Sms.Inbox.DATE,
Telephony.Sms.Inbox.PERSON};
final Cursor cursor = ctx.getContentResolver().query(Telephony.Sms.Inbox.CONTENT_URI,
projection, null, null, Telephony.Sms.Inbox.DEFAULT_SORT_ORDER);
When populated, the id returned from the index Telephony.Sms.Inbox.PERSON relates to the id of the deprecated Contacts.People._ID and can be used to query further contact information in the following way:
final String[] projection = {Contacts.People.DISPLAY_NAME};
final String[] selectionArgs = {contactId};
final Cursor cursor = ctx.getContentResolver().query(Contacts.People.CONTENT_URI,
projection, Contacts.People._ID + " = ?", selectionArgs, null);
Why would the relatively new Telephony API use deprecated tables, instead of ContactsContract?
Telephony.Sms.Inbox.PERSON documentation states:
Type: INTEGER (reference to item in content://contacts/people)
I've tried unsuccessfully (but not unsurprisingly?) to find a mapping to the id in any of the ContactsContract id fields, so I'm left having to use deprecated APIs in order to resolve the queries I need to perform quickly.
Such queries include searching for messages by a particular contact, for which I only have the name. The contact could have multiple numbers, which may not be in the correct format to potentially match Telephony.Sms.Inbox.ADDRESS entries.....
The workaround of using Telephony.Sms.Inbox.ADDRESS and ContactsContract.PhoneLookup is not the end of the world when going from the number to the contact, but I still feel I must be missing something here?
Here is the process I'm using to get the messages for 'Joe Bloggs'.
1) Query the ContactsContract table to confirm a contact by the name of Joe Bloggs exists on the device - or get a close match if the contact is actually listed as 'Joe Blogs'.
2) Using the confirmed name, I query the deprecated Contact.People table to get all associated ids for the contact in the following way:
final String selection = Contacts.People.DISPLAY_NAME + " LIKE ?";
final String[] projection = {Contacts.People.DISPLAY_NAME,
Contacts.People._ID};
final String[] selectionArgs = {contactName};
final Cursor cursor = ctx.getContentResolver().query(Contacts.People.CONTENT_URI,
projection, selection, selectionArgs, null);
3) Using the list of deprecated contact ids, I query the message table as so:
final String[] referredArgs = new String[contactIdArray.size()];
for (int i = 0; i < contactIdArray.size(); i++) {
referredArgs[i] = contactIdArray.get(i);
}
final String referredSelection = Telephony.Sms.Inbox.PERSON + " IN "
+ "(" + TextUtils.join(",", referredArgs) + ")";
final String[] projection = {Telephony.Sms.Inbox.BODY,
Telephony.Sms.Inbox.ADDRESS,
Telephony.Sms.Inbox.READ,
Telephony.Sms.Inbox.DATE,
Telephony.Sms.Inbox.PERSON};
final Cursor cursor = ctx.getContentResolver().query(Telephony.Sms.Inbox.CONTENT_URI,
projection, referredSelection, null, Telephony.Sms.Inbox.DEFAULT_SORT_ORDER);
I'm hoping someone will tell me I'm going round the houses here and there is a more obvious solution using current APIs. I don't consider iterating the entire message table using ContactsContract.PhoneLookup an optimised solution.
Thanks in advance.

I wouldn't use the Telephony.Sms.Inbox.PERSON field, and definitely wouldn't query the deprecated People apis if I were you.
The People apis had been deprecated for so long you can't count on all devices our there to properly support it anymore.
First thing you need to understand is that there isn't a one-to-one link between sms and contacts.
An SMS can come from a non-contact phone number, a single contact, multiple contacts, a mixture of contacts and non-contacts, alpha-numeric ids, and even other, more rare options.
Next thing, you should read carefully the stock code and how it handles a properly called "Recipient ID" that you can get from the SMS collection, there's a collection called canonical-addresses (or canonical-address) that serves as a mapping between a phone number (or a comma-separated list of phones) and a recipient id.
The code does a single query on launch to cache the entire table in memory, and then uses it to map between phones and recipient-ids.
Here's the mapping class

Why would the relatively new Telephony API use deprecated tables, instead of ContactsContract?
What you are referring to is not new. In Telephony.java, you see it relies on the existing content://sms provider:
public static final class Inbox implements BaseColumns, TextBasedSmsColumns {
/**
* The {#code content://} style URL for this table.
*/
public static final Uri CONTENT_URI = Uri.parse("content://sms/inbox");
It was already there in Donut (and probably before, but I didn't check).
What's new in Kitkat is the ability to change the SMS app.

It's been five years and it's still relevant. You still need to do endlessly phoneLookup and hang up callbacks on contact tables if all you need to do is synchronize text messages.

I do not understand your concern properly but I am working on similar project, here is the basic code, and basic, important columns for fetching and display a message:
ContentResolver contentResolver = getContentResolver();
final String[] projection = new String[]{"*"};
Cursor SMSL = contentResolver.query(Telephony.Sms.CONTENT_URI, projection, null, null, "date ASC");
int msgscount = SMSL.getCount();
if (msgscount>0) {
msgs = new String[SMSL.getCount()][msgs_column_count];
int i = 0;
while (SMSL.moveToNext()) {
progress.setProgress(i);
msgs[i][0] = SMSL.getString(SMSL.getColumnIndex("address"));
msgs[i][1] = SMSL.getString(SMSL.getColumnIndex("date_sent"));
msgs[i][2] = SMSL.getString(SMSL.getColumnIndex("date"));
msgs[i][3] = SMSL.getString(SMSL.getColumnIndex("type"));
msgs[i][4] = SMSL.getString(SMSL.getColumnIndex("body"));
msgs[i][5] = SMSL.getString(SMSL.getColumnIndex("read"));
if (SMSL.getString(SMSL.getColumnIndex("service_center")) != null){
msgs[i][6] = SMSL.getString(SMSL.getColumnIndex("service_center"));
}else{
msgs[i][6] = "";
}
i++;
}
SMSL.close();
}else{
msgs = new String[0][0];
Toast.makeText(getApplicationContext(),"No messages found!",Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show();
}
If you want any help with this or fetching messages, let me know.

Cursor.moveToNext error

I'm seeing a crash report for this occassionally:
Fatal Exception: java.lang.IllegalStateException: Couldn't read row 1127, col 0 from CursorWindow. Make sure the Cursor is initialized correctly before accessing data from it.
at android.database.CursorWindow.nativeGetLong(CursorWindow.java)
at android.database.CursorWindow.getLong(CursorWindow.java:511)
at android.database.AbstractWindowedCursor.getLong(AbstractWindowedCursor.java:75)
at android.database.AbstractCursor.moveToPosition(AbstractCursor.java:220)
at android.database.AbstractCursor.moveToNext(AbstractCursor.java:245)
at android.database.CursorWrapper.moveToNext(CursorWrapper.java:166)
at com.anthonymandra.util.ImageUtils.cleanDatabase(SourceFile:381)
Apparently the moveToNext is failing mid-loop (note row 1127). The loop removes entries that represent files that can no longer be found.
final ArrayList<ContentProviderOperation> operations = new ArrayList<>();
try( Cursor cursor = c.getContentResolver().query(Meta.CONTENT_URI, null, null, null, null))
{
if (cursor == null)
return;
final int uriColumn = cursor.getColumnIndex(Meta.URI);
final int idColumn = cursor.getColumnIndex(BaseColumns._ID);
while (cursor.moveToNext())
{
String uriString = cursor.getString(uriColumn);
if (uriString == null) // we've got some bogus data, just remove
{
operations.add(ContentProviderOperation.newDelete(
Uri.withAppendedPath(Meta.CONTENT_URI, cursor.getString(idColumn))).build());
continue;
}
Uri uri = Uri.parse(uriString);
UsefulDocumentFile file = UsefulDocumentFile.fromUri(c, uri);
if (!file.exists())
{
operations.add(ContentProviderOperation.newDelete(Meta.CONTENT_URI)
.withSelection(getWhere(), new String[]{uriString}).build());
}
}
}
c.getContentResolver().applyBatch(Meta.AUTHORITY, operations);
Any idea how a cursor could fail mid-loop like that?

You appear to be making a fairly large query: at least 1127 rows, and for all possible columns (despite the fact that you are only using two of them). And, during your work with that Cursor, you are doing disk I/O and/or IPC back to the ContentProvider, assuming that UsefulDocumentFile is related to Android's DocumentFile.
As Prakash notes, the Cursor that you get back may contain only a subset of the information. As soon as you try advancing past that point, the Cursor needs to go back to the data source and get the next window of results. I can see you running into this sort of problem if there has been a substantial change in the data while this work has been going on (e.g., there are now fewer than 1127 rows).
I suggest that you:
Constrain the columns that you get back to the subset that you need, and
Avoid the I/O during the loop (e.g., spin through the Cursor to build up an ArrayList<Pair> or something, close the Cursor, then iterate over the list)

may be you are srote file in database that's why you get java.lang.IllegalStateException
UsefulDocumentFile file = UsefulDocumentFile.fromUri(c, uri);
Android SQLite returns rows in cursor windows that have the maximum size of 2MB as specified by
config_cursorWindowSize.If your row exceeds this limit, you'll get this error.
Store files in filesystem and paths in database.

Android Telephony.Sms.Conversations

How can Telephony.Sms.Conversations be used to retrieve convo information to String?
I tried:
ContentResolver cr = context.getContentResolver();
Cursor convo = cr.query(Telephony.Sms.Conversations.CONTENT_URI,
new String[] { Telephony.Sms.Conversations.ADDRESS,
Telephony.Sms.Conversations.PERSON },
null,
null,
Telephony.Sms.Conversations.DEFAULT_SORT_ORDER);
How ever I get error invalid column address. when I remove address I get invalid column person. What column's does this class provide? (I couldn't find anything on the API reference page or any examples online. btw I already have a working code to retrieve inbox and outbox but I would like to get conversations too (I mean title and num of msges), without matching inbox and outbox results)

You can only get "msg_count" and "snippet" values from Telephony.Sms.Conversations, and you can get the "address" value from Telephony.TextBasedSmsColumns.
private static final String[] SMS_CONVERSATIONS_PROJECTION = new String[]{"msg_count", "snippet"};
Cursor cursor = cr.query(Telephony.Sms.Conversations.CONTENT_URI,
SMS_CONVERSATIONS_PROJECTION, null, null,Telephony.Sms.Conversations.DEFAULT_SORT_ORDER);
while(cursor.moveToNext()) {
int msg_count = cursor.getInt(cursor.getColumnIndex("msg_count"));
String snippet = cursor.getString(cursor.getColumnIndex("snippet"));
}
cursor.close;
It's inconvenient for us without "address", "date" and so on.
Telephony.Sms.Conversation

Updating List View dynamically with data loaded through LoaderManager

in my application I am displaying a list of items queried from the database with the use of Loader Manager and Content Provider. The results are attached to a SimpleCursorAdapter and then displayed on the List View. I would like to be able to load, let's say up to 20 items at first and when scrolling to the end of that list, load up additional 20 items. Up to now, I used similar approach as here:
How to update listview whose data was queried from database through SimpleCursorAdapter?
i.e. limiting query results to 20 and increasing the number appropriately in the OnScrollListener and restarting the loader with new instructions.
The problem is with this statement:
incomeAdapter.swapCursor(data);
It completely resets adapter's data, therefore only the second batch of items are displayed on the list. Is there any way to simply load additional items on top of existing ones? Thanks
EDIT:
Merging cursors like this:
if (incomeAdapter.getCursor() != null){
Log.v("Income Activity", "current adapter");
Cursor oldData = incomeAdapter.getCursor();
MergeCursor merge = new MergeCursor(new Cursor[] {oldData, data});
incomeAdapter.swapCursor(merge);
}
else {
Log.v("Income Activity", "no current adapter");
incomeAdapter.swapCursor(data);
}
throws an exception:
07-13 16:56:15.455: E/AndroidRuntime(5665): FATAL EXCEPTION: main
07-13 16:56:15.455: E/AndroidRuntime(5665): android.database.StaleDataException:
Attempting to access a closed CursorWindow.Most probable cause: cursor is deactivated
prior to calling this method.
EDIT2:
As per request, the code where data is requested:
public Loader<Cursor> onCreateLoader(int id, Bundle args) {
orderBy = sortOrder + " LIMIT " + limitSkip + "," + limitCount;
CursorLoader cursorLoader = new CursorLoader(this,
DatabaseProvider.CONTENT_URI1, PROJECTION, null, null, orderBy);
return cursorLoader;
}

You need to use the previous cursor: incomeAdapter.getCursor() and merge it with the new data.
MergeCursor comes to your aid there:
Cursor oldData = incomeAdapter.getCursor();
MergeCursor merge = new MergeCursor(new Cursor[] {oldData, data});
incomeAdapter.swapCursor(merge);
EDIT:
You are using a CursorLoader. You don't need to re-query the database or LIMIT your queries. The loader does all that for you when specific data is requested.
Android Docs: Loaders

creating selection string as a parameter to a cursor constructor

I got this piece of code in a project I'm working on, in the implementation of public Loader onCreateLoader(int id, Bundle args):
Uri baseUri=Events.CONTENT_URI;
final String[] EVENT_PROJECTION = new String[] {Events.CALENDAR_ID,
Events.ORGANIZER,
Events.TITLE,
Events.EVENT_LOCATION,
Events.DTSTART,
Events.DTEND,
Events.EVENT_TIMEZONE,
Events.EVENT_END_TIMEZONE,
Events.DURATION,
Events.ALL_DAY,
Events.RRULE,
Events.RDATE,
};
String selection = "((" + "this.isCalendarAvailable("+Events.CALENDAR_ID+") = ?)) AND ("
+ "TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS.toDays(Long.parseLong("+Events.DTSTART+",10)) = ?))";
String[] selectionArgs = new String[]{"true",String.valueOf(selectedDate.getTimeInMillis())};
return new CursorLoader(this,baseUri,EVENT_PROJECTION, selection, selectionArgs, Events.DTSTART);
I wanted to get the details (specified in EVENT_PROJECTION) of all events that are found on available calendars (according to the boolean method isCalendarAvailable) and that start on selectedDate.
I tried to do that by initializing String selection as above, but it seems that it is not possible due to a misunderstanding the way this string should be written.
I already know that i can use "AND", "OR" and "=?".
But is there any other syntax rules for a string to be used as a parameter for cursorLoader constructor??
If not, is there any way for selecting what i need from the Uri according to some methods (as I tried above)?
Thanks a lot in advance