How to call Android contacts list?

Question

Hi,

I'm making an Android app, and need to call the phone's contact list. I need to call the contacts list function, pick a contact, then return to my app with the contact's name. Here's the code I got on the internet, but it doesnt work. Please help:

import android.app.ListActivity;
import android.content.Intent;
import android.database.Cursor;
import android.os.Bundle;
import android.provider.Contacts.People;
import android.view.View;
import android.widget.ListAdapter;
import android.widget.ListView;
import android.widget.SimpleCursorAdapter;
import android.widget.TextView;

public class Contacts extends ListActivity {

    private ListAdapter mAdapter;
    public TextView pbContact;
    public static String PBCONTACT;
    public static final int ACTIVITY_EDIT=1;
    private static final int ACTIVITY_CREATE=0;

    // Called when the activity is first created. 
    @Override
    public void onCreate(Bundle icicle) {
        super.onCreate(icicle);
        Cursor C = getContentResolver().query(People.CONTENT_URI, null, null, null, null);
        startManagingCursor(C);

        String[] columns = new String[] {People.NAME};
        int[] names = new int[] {R.id.row_entry};

        mAdapter = new SimpleCursorAdapter(this, R.layout.mycontacts, C, columns, names);
        setListAdapter(mAdapter);
    } // end onCreate()
    // Called when contact is pressed
    @Override
    protected void onListItemClick(ListView l, View v, int position, long id) {
        super.onListItemClick(l, v, position, id);

        Cursor C = (Cursor) mAdapter.getItem(position);
        PBCONTACT = C.getString(C.getColumnIndex(People.NAME));

        // RHS 05/06
        //pbContact = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.myContact);
        //pbContact.setText(new StringBuilder().append("b"));

        Intent i = new Intent(this, NoteEdit.class);
        startActivityForResult(i, ACTIVITY_CREATE);
    }
}

Answer 1

I'm not 100% sure what your sample code is supposed to do, but the following snippet should help you 'call the contacts list function, pick a contact, then return to [your] app with the contact's name'.

There are three steps to this process.

1) Permissions

Add a permission to read contacts data to your application manifest.

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

2) Calling the Contact Picker

Within your Activity, create an Intent that asks the system to find an Activity that can perform a PICK action from the items in the Contacts URI.

Intent intent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_PICK, People.CONTENT_URI);

Call startActivityForResult, passing in this Intent (and a request code integer, PICK_CONTACT in this example). This will cause Android to launch an Activity that's registered to support ACTION_PICK on the People.CONTENT_URI, then return to this Activity when the selection is made (or canceled).

startActivityForResult(intent, PICK_CONTACT);

3) Listening for the Result

Also in your Activity, override the onActivityResult method to listen for the return from the 'select a contact' Activity you launched in step 2. You should check that the returned request code matches the value you're expecting, and that the result code is RESULT_OK.

You can get the URI of the selected contact by calling getData() on the data Intent parameter. To get the name of the selected contact you need to use that URI to create a new query and extract the name from the returned cursor.

@Override
public void onActivityResult(int reqCode, int resultCode, Intent data) {
  super.onActivityResult(reqCode, resultCode, data);

  switch (reqCode) {
    case (PICK_CONTACT) :
      if (resultCode == Activity.RESULT_OK) {
        Uri contactData = data.getData();
        Cursor c =  managedQuery(contactData, null, null, null, null);
        if (c.moveToFirst()) {
          String name = c.getString(c.getColumnIndexOrThrow(People.NAME));
          // TODO Whatever you want to do with the selected contact name.
        }
      }
      break;
  }
}

Answer 2

Thanks Reto, just what I was looking for.

My only question is this: is there any way of allowing new contacts to be created, while in the contact list ?

Thanks .... /Brian

Answer 3

Looking around for an API Level 5 solution using ContactsContract API you could slightly modify the code above with the following:

  Intent intent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_PICK);
  intent.setType(ContactsContract.Contacts.CONTENT_TYPE);
  startActivityForResult(intent, PICK_CONTACT);

And then in onActivityResult use the column name:

  ContactsContract.Contacts.DISPLAY_NAME