How to populate an AutoCompleteTextView with contacts names in android 2.1

Question

Hi. I have an AutoCompleteTextView and i want it to autocomplete contact names on input. The problem is that Contacts.People has been deprecated. The new documentation says to use ContactsContract but i can't find any proper tutorial. Can anyone give me a sample code or point me to an appropriate tutorial.

Thanks.

Answer 1

Android Contact API For 2.0

Granting Access

Before an application can query the contact records access must be granted through the AndroidManifest.xml file stored in the root of the project. Add the following uses-permission belows the uses-sdk statement.

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

Querying The Android Contact Database

Retrieving Contact Details

Basic contact information stored in Contacts table with detailed information stored in individual tables for normalization. In Android 2.0 to query the base contact records the URI to query is stored in ContactsContract.Contacts.CONTENT_URI. package higherpass.TestContacts;

import android.app.Activity;
import android.content.ContentResolver;
import android.database.Cursor;
import android.os.Bundle;
import android.provider.ContactsContract;

public class TestContacts extends Activity {
    /** Called when the activity is first created. */
    @Override
    public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        setContentView(R.layout.main);
        ContentResolver cr = getContentResolver();
        Cursor cur = cr.query(ContactsContract.Contacts.CONTENT_URI,
                null, null, null, null);
        if (cur.getCount() > 0) {
        while (cur.moveToNext()) {
            String id = cur.getString(
                        cur.getColumnIndex(ContactsContract.Contacts._ID));
        String name = cur.getString(
                        cur.getColumnIndex(ContactsContract.Contacts.DISPLAY_NAME));
        if (Integer.parseInt(cur.getString(cur.getColumnIndex(ContactsContract.Contacts.HAS_PHONE_NUMBER))) > 0) {
            //Query phone here.  Covered next
            }
            }
    }
    }
}

This application starts off as any other Android application. First create a ContentResolver isntance in cr. Then use the ContentResolver instance to query the database and return a Cursor with the contacts list. The query is perofrmed against the URI stored in ContactsContract.Contacts.CONTENT_URI. Next check if the cursor contains records and if so loop through them. The record ID field is stored in the id variable. This will be used as a where parameter later. Also the display name field is stored in the string name.

Read more about Working With Android Contacts