So, judging from list traffic, there's... confusion, let's say, surrounding the Android 2.0 ContactsContract API. Some parts of the new API are fairly straightforward, others? Not so much.
Look at the threads about "How do I set a contact photo?" or "How do I create a new contact under 2.0, from within my app?" (which, of course, leads into the whole Accounts thing) or "What do I store as a single, consistent value to tie data in my app to a contact, now? What's the reliable key into that data?" or "OMG WTF WHERE ARE THE PHONE NUMBERS? I THINK LITTLE PHONE GOBLINS ATE THEM!" or so on. (Well, maybe not the last one.) Some of the questions seem to occur over and over again. "I *still* can't set contact photos!" "Can someone show me how to get the phone numbers for a contact, hungry goblins notwithstanding?" Etc. I therefore suggest that these qualify as FAQs. So, I'm going to suggest we as a community put together a quick list of Common Contact Operations (or Ones People Are Likely To Want), and put together some simple little tutorials which can be dumped somewhere on GoogleCode. The questions I see occurring a lot on a couple of web searches are: 1) How do I just get ALL the contacts under the 2.0 API? 2) Given a contact, how do I get all the phone numbers? 3) Given a contact, how do I get all the email addresses? 4) What sort of identifier should I represent a contact with in my local data, so I can later get their most-current data? 5) How do I set a contact photo? 6) How do I add a contact to the address book from within an app? 7) How do I add custom data to a contact? 8) How do I add an Account type, a'la Facebook, so that I can sync contact data in from MySpace/Livejournal/whatever. 9) How do I /get/ the nifty status messages and the source for them (a'la 'Away for lunch' on 'Google Talk,' or 'eating a pie!' on 'Facebook'), so I can display them alongside a contact in my own app? (Alternatively, some ask how they can set the nifty status messages and have them appear in the QuickContact bar or in other apps.) 10) How do I add an action to the QuickContact bar for a contact? 1-7 seem to be the most-often-asked questions, but I've seen 8-10 around as well. Does anyone else think that this would be worth putting together as a little reference and set of samples for 2.0? Would anyone else be willing to pitch in and write one or two of the samples? I figure, each of the items could be tackled as a short write-up individually (and I'll certainly do some as well, since I'm the one proposing this). Maybe we can even get one or two of the Google folks to look at the samples when done and confirm that the methods used /are/ the best-practice ones. :) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Developers" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en
