A friend to help with Android ContentProvider operations.
Android uses the concept of "ContentProviders" to share data among apps quite successfully. While the concept behind these ContentProviders is quite powerful it can be a real hassle to work with. Reading and writing data can be a a challenging task. The resulting code is easy to get wrong and often quite verbose and hard to read. Using the efficient batch operations is non trivial as well, especially when working with "related" rows.
This library aims to add an abstraction layer to ContentProviders to handle operations in an object oriented manner. With ContentPal, ContentProvider operations
are written in a declarative way before being enqueued for aggregated execution.
The resulting code is easier to write and read.
Note that this library is not meant to be an ORM and uses database terminology all over the place.
The interfaces of this library are not considered 100% stable at this time. Design and names are still subject to change.
This library has been created with specific goals in mind.
- reduce boilerplate when working with content providers
- provide a certain level of type safety, i.e. reduce the risk of writing data to the wrong table
- declarative way to describe operations
- utilize IPC limit as good as possible in order to make big transactions efficient
- automatically resolve references when inserting related rows in a single transaction
ContactsPal provides ContentProvider specific classes including some of the most important Table
and RowData
implementations like RawContacts
and PhoneData
.
CalendarPal provides CalendarProvider specific classes including some of the most important Table
and RowData
implementations like Events
and ReminderData
.
The following example is taken from Android's ContactsProvider Documentation. It shows the basic steps to create a new contact with display name, phone and email.
ArrayList<ContentProviderOperation> ops =
new ArrayList<ContentProviderOperation>();
ContentProviderOperation.Builder op =
ContentProviderOperation.newInsert(ContactsContract.RawContacts.CONTENT_URI)
.withValue(ContactsContract.RawContacts.ACCOUNT_TYPE, mSelectedAccount.getType())
.withValue(ContactsContract.RawContacts.ACCOUNT_NAME, mSelectedAccount.getName());
ops.add(op.build());
op = ContentProviderOperation.newInsert(ContactsContract.Data.CONTENT_URI)
.withValueBackReference(ContactsContract.Data.RAW_CONTACT_ID, 0)
.withValue(ContactsContract.Data.MIMETYPE,
ContactsContract.CommonDataKinds.StructuredName.CONTENT_ITEM_TYPE)
.withValue(ContactsContract.CommonDataKinds.StructuredName.DISPLAY_NAME, name);
ops.add(op.build());
op = ContentProviderOperation.newInsert(ContactsContract.Data.CONTENT_URI)
.withValueBackReference(ContactsContract.Data.RAW_CONTACT_ID, 0)
.withValue(ContactsContract.Data.MIMETYPE,
ContactsContract.CommonDataKinds.Phone.CONTENT_ITEM_TYPE)
.withValue(ContactsContract.CommonDataKinds.Phone.NUMBER, phone)
.withValue(ContactsContract.CommonDataKinds.Phone.TYPE, phoneType);
ops.add(op.build());
op = ContentProviderOperation.newInsert(ContactsContract.Data.CONTENT_URI)
.withValueBackReference(ContactsContract.Data.RAW_CONTACT_ID, 0)
.withValue(ContactsContract.Data.MIMETYPE,
ContactsContract.CommonDataKinds.Email.CONTENT_ITEM_TYPE)
.withValue(ContactsContract.CommonDataKinds.Email.ADDRESS, email)
.withValue(ContactsContract.CommonDataKinds.Email.TYPE, emailType);
op.withYieldAllowed(true);
ops.add(op.build());
getContentResolver().applyBatch(ContactsContract.AUTHORITY, ops);
The following code snippets show the same operation with ContentPal/ContactsPal:
Before you can perform any operations you need to create a few required objects like the tables to work with. Usually this has to be done only once.
ContentProviderClient client =
getContentResolver().acquireContentProviderClient(ContactsContract.AUTHORITY_URI);
OperationsQueue operationsQueue = new BasicOperationsQueue(client);
Create an OperationsBatch
which contains the operations to insert the RawContact and the data rows and enqueue them for execution.
operationsQueue.enqueue(
new Yieldable( // optional, not required when inserting only one contact
new InsertRawContactBatch(
account,
// list the data to be inserted
new DisplayNameData(name),
new Typed(phoneType, new PhoneData(phone)),
new Typed(emailType, new EmailData(email))))));
At this point you can enqueue more operations. All operations will be executed automatically when the transaction size grows too large or when flush()
is
called.
References between the inserted rows will be resolved automatically.
Also note that all relevant types are generic having the contract they implement as the generic type. That makes it much harder to get confused. E.g. you can not accidentally try to insert an email address into RawContacts.
Once everything is done, just make sure all pending operations get committed and close the ContentProviderClient
operationsQueue.flush();
client.release();
To read contacts you build a view onto the Table
to read and iterate over a RowSet
that contains the rows you need.
// a sync-adapter view onto RawContacts, scoped to a specific account
View<ContactsContract.RawContacts> rawContacts =
new Synced<>(new AccountScoped<>(new RawContacts(client), account));
// iterate over all "dirty" contacts
for (RowSnapshot<ContactsContract.RawContacts> rowSnapshot:new Dirty<>(rawContacts))
{
// work with the row snapshot
// for instance, set the dirty flag to 0 like so
operationsQueue.enqueue(
new SingletonOperationsBatch(
new new Put<>(rowSnapshot, new CleanData())));
}
The same can also be achieved in a declarative way like this:
operationsQueue.enqueue(
new MappedRowSetBatch<>(
// map all dirty rows of a specific account
new Dirty<>(new Synced<>(new AccountScoped<>(new RawContacts(client), account))),
new Function<ContactsContract.RawContacts, Operation<>>()
{
public Operation<> apply(RowSnapshot<ContactsContract.RawContacts> rowSnapwhot)
{
// work with the row and return an Operation, can be a NoOp or this:
return new Put<>(rowSnapshot, new CleanData());
}
}
)
);
Copyright dmfs GmbH 2017, licensed under Apache2.