We Keep Coding

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.

How to mark all text messages as read on Android?

I'm trying to mark all text messages as read when user opens my inbox. I've pieced together code from a few tutorials online and ended up with this:
Uri uri = Uri.parse("content://sms/inbox");
Cursor cursor = getContentResolver().query(uri, null, null, null, null);
while (cursor.moveToNext()) {
if ((cursor.getInt(cursor.getColumnIndex("read")) == 0)) {
String SmsMessageId = cursor.getString(cursor.getColumnIndex("_id"));
ContentValues values = new ContentValues();
values.put("read", true);
getContentResolver().update(Uri.parse("content://sms/inbox"), values, "read=0", null);
}
I just want to mark all text messages as read in the onResume() function on this activity. My code may be a pile of crap, like i said it's mashed together from a few places. Corrections to, or alternatives to, my code would be very appreciated. Compiling the code with the sdk for 5.1, testing on 4.4, my app is the default SMS app.

If you want to mark all messages as read, you can do that in one go.
ContentValues values = new ContentValues();
values.put(Telephony.Sms.READ, 1);
getContentResolver().update(Telephony.Sms.Inbox.CONTENT_URI,
values, Telephony.Sms.READ + "=0", null);

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

Best way to load a large amount of data in android without making the user wait

I'm working in an application that read phone contacts and use them in my application (Call history, Favorite contacts and All contacts).
My UI consist of tab host control and user can swap between them, as I want my data to be shared across all my activities and also to be saved in only one place.
So I have created a singleton class called data controller, and when I open the application I show loading screen until all data loaded.
The problem now that user is complaining because of waiting a lot of time about (1 minute) every time they open the application when he has a very large amount of contacts, so how can I optimize my code in a good way?
EDIT
This is the method that I'm using to get all contacts:
public static ArrayList<ContactInfo> getAllContactWithNumberAndNameAndPhoto(
Context context, boolean starred) {
ArrayList<ContactInfo> retList = new ArrayList<ContactInfo>();
ContentResolver cr = context.getContentResolver();
Cursor cur = null;
if (starred == true) {
cur = cr.query(ContactsContract.Contacts.CONTENT_URI, null,
"starred=?", new String[] { "1" }, null);
} else {
cur = cr.query(ContactsContract.Contacts.CONTENT_URI, null, null,
null, null);
}
if (cur.getCount() > 0) {
while (cur.moveToNext()) {
ContactInfo item = new ContactInfo();
String id = cur.getString(cur
.getColumnIndex(ContactsContract.Contacts._ID));
String name = cur
.getString(cur
.getColumnIndex(ContactsContract.Contacts.DISPLAY_NAME));
Uri photo = PhoneUtils.getPhotoUriFromID(context, id);
String starredValue = cur.getString(cur
.getColumnIndex(ContactsContract.Contacts.STARRED));
boolean isFav = false;
if (starredValue.equals("1"))
isFav = true;
if (Integer
.parseInt(cur.getString(cur
.getColumnIndex(ContactsContract.Contacts.HAS_PHONE_NUMBER))) > 0) {
Cursor pCur = cr.query(
ContactsContract.CommonDataKinds.Phone.CONTENT_URI,
null,
ContactsContract.CommonDataKinds.Phone.CONTACT_ID
+ " = ?", new String[] { id }, null);
while (pCur.moveToNext()) {
String phoneNo = pCur
.getString(pCur
.getColumnIndex(ContactsContract.CommonDataKinds.Phone.NUMBER));
item.addPhone(removeCharactersFromPhoneNumber(phoneNo));
}
pCur.close();
if (photo != null) {
item.setPhoto(photo.toString());
}
item.setName(name);
item.setFavorite(isFav);
item.setRecent(false);
retList.add(item);
}
}
cur.close();
}
return retList;
}
Please let me know if I can optimize this method.

Im surprised it takes that long to load the contacts from the device.
Have you profiled the app to see where the time is actually spent? Something seems wrong here.
If it truly takes that long to load from the system providers (due to the OS) you could cache the results (i.e. put in your own SQL db) so you can load quickly on each app visit (< 1 sec) and refresh from device in the background.

I guess that the bottleneck of your method is photo loading. Try to load everything except photos, and then show your activity, concurrently loading photos.
Also you can try to create your own app table that contains just the data you need. So you'll do less selects while loading contacts. But you would have to synchronize your table. You can do so concurrently.

General weirdness with SQLite / Android

I have this simple application that I'm currently writing as practice. Its purpose is to allow the user to send a quote and the author of that quote on a server (in this case a Parse.com backend I have registered) and then show those quotes to other users of the app randomly. So by opening the app, you get a random comment that someone has posted.
The way I'm trying to accomplish this is:
On start-up, the app connects to the Parse.com backend and downloads all the currently available quotes (I call those Inanity objects because the quotes are supposedly enlightened but should actually be stupid and nonsensical - anyway, doesn't matter). This is the code:
query.findInBackground(new FindCallback<ParseObject>() {
SQLi sqlite = new SQLi(MainActivity.this);
SQLiteDatabase dbz = sqlite.getWritableDatabase();
#Override
public void done(List<ParseObject> list, ParseException e) {
//sqlite.dbDelete();
if (e == null) {
int size = list.size();
for (int i = 0; i < size; i++) {
ParseObject object = list.get(i);
String author = object.get("author").toString();
String content = object.get("content").toString();
Inanity inan = new Inanity(content, author, 1);
Log.d("FOR LOOP" + i, inan.toString());
sqlite.insertInanity(dbz, inan);
}
}
}
});
Pretty simple. (dbz is an SQLiteDatabase acquired by calling getWritableDatabase(), by the way). The code below is the code for the SQLiteOpenHelper insertInanity() method that I use to put the retrieved data from the server in the local SQLite database:
public void insertInanity(SQLiteDatabase db, Inanity inanity) {
ContentValues values = new ContentValues();
values.put(CONTENT_INANITIES, inanity.getContent());
values.put(AUTHOR_INANITIES, inanity.getAuthor());
values.put(UPVOTE_INANITIES, inanity.getUpvotes());
db.insert(TABLE_INANITIES, null, values);
}
I pass an SQLiteDatabase object to the method simply to avoid having to call getWriteableDatabase() - I had some trouble with recurring calls if I kept doing that.
After writing the server data on the local SQLite database, the user is taken to an Activity that starts showing the quotes and the author of the quotes in a couple of TextViews. This is the code the retrieves a quote/author object from the SQLite database:
public Inanity retrieveInanity(int id) {
SQLiteDatabase db = this.getReadableDatabase();
Cursor cursor = db.query(TABLE_INANITIES, new String[] {
CONTENT_INANITIES, AUTHOR_INANITIES, UPVOTE_INANITIES },
ID_INANITIES + " = " + id, null, null, null, null);
if (cursor == null || cursor.getCount() == 0) {
return new Inanity("a", "b", 1);
}
else {
cursor.moveToFirst();
String contentL = cursor.getString(cursor
.getColumnIndex(CONTENT_INANITIES));
String authorL = cursor.getString(cursor
.getColumnIndex(AUTHOR_INANITIES));
int upvotesL = cursor.getInt(cursor
.getColumnIndex(UPVOTE_INANITIES));
Inanity inanity = new Inanity(contentL, authorL, upvotesL);
return inanity;
}
}
Finally, the quote to be displayed is randomly selected from the locally stored results thusly ("a" is an int variable declared earlier by the way)
final SQLi sql = new SQLi(this);
a = sql.getRowCount() + 1;
Button button = (Button) findViewById(R.id.button1);
button.setOnClickListener(new OnClickListener() {
#Override
public void onClick(View v) {
Random rand = new Random();
int e = rand.nextInt(a);
if (e != 0) {
Inanity inanity = sql.retrieveInanity(e);
String content = inanity.getContent();
String author = inanity.getAuthor();
ImageView imageView = (ImageView) findViewById(R.id.downloaded);
TextView contentView = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.content);
TextView authorView = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.author);
Picasso.with(ShowActivity.this)
.load("http://img1.etsystatic.com/000/0/5356113/il_fullxfull.314192275.jpg")
.into(imageView);
contentView.setAlpha(0.9f);
authorView.setAlpha(0.9f);
Animation alpha = new AlphaAnimation(0.1f, 1.0f);
alpha.setDuration(2000);
contentView.setText(content);
authorView.setText(author);
contentView.startAnimation(alpha);
authorView.startAnimation(alpha);
}
else {
Toast.makeText(ShowActivity.this,
"Cursor trouble in wonderland!", Toast.LENGTH_LONG)
.show();
}
}
});
}
The getRowCount() method of the SQLi class is this:
public int getRowCount() {
int count = 1;
SQLiteDatabase db = getReadableDatabase();
Cursor cursor = db.rawQuery("SELECT * FROM " + TABLE_INANITIES, null);
if (cursor != null && cursor.getCount() > 0 && cursor.moveToFirst()) {
count = cursor.getCount();
}
return count;
}
For the most part. this works great. So, what's the problem, I hear you ask? Well, since I want to refresh the quotes every time the application starts up and get fresh ones from the server, the way I'm trying to accomplish that is by deleting the contents of the Inanity table of the database and re-populate them on start-up. So, I have created this method in the SQLi database helper class that's called dbDelete() which I call right at the start of the done() method of the FindCallback class of the Parse.com library (although I have commented this out from this code, it works swimmingly: it deletes the contents of the database just fine). Unfortunately, when I do that, it appears that the local SQLite database is not repopulated on app startup for some infernal reason, so I keep getting the placeholder "a", "b" and 1 values that are returned when the retrieveInanity() method cannot find cursor contents. Here is the dbDelete() method, which is quite simple:
public void dbDelete() {
SQLiteDatabase db = this.getWritableDatabase();
db.delete(TABLE_INANITIES, null, null);
}
I have been trying to solve this for quite some time and it's driving me crazy. I understand that the question is pretty convoluted, big and that it doesn't contain any catchy NullPointerExceptions/logcat action but any help would be appreciated. I must be missing something obvious related to the SQLite database use but I simply can't figure it out.

I wrote a similar app (one that made calls to a remote database and updated the info on local db). You should try using db.insertOrThrow. You will need to wrap the method in a Try...Catch statement. It will try to insert rows, and will throw an exception when a row already exists. You can then ignore the errors by leaving the Catch part blank. This will avoid the deletion and rebuild of the table.
try {
db.insertOrThrow(TABLE_INANITIES, null, values);
} catch SQLException s {
\\do nothing, as we don't care about existing rows
}
If you set up the quote server to have unique identifiers for the quote, then the local copy, your SQLite DB, will not insert duplicate entries. For example, your quote DB table on the server would look something like this
ID | Quote | Author
1 | blah | J. smith
Where the column ID is set as the unique identifier (or unique key). When your app calls the server and queries the remote DB, your local DB has only records that don't exist added to it.
You also want to make sure, I believe, that you update your cursor adapter in onResume().