Chapter 1: Share data between applications using Content Providers

By using the content provider, data can be shared across applications. The content provider is a set of data wrapped up in a custom API to read and write. Applications/Processes have to register themselves as a provider of data. Other applications can request Android to read/write that data through a fixed API.

Content provider API has methods to perform operations(CRUD) on data.

Contacts are the best example – that exposes user information to other applications, Media store-Allows other applications to access, store media files.

There is some standard methods – insert(), query(), update(), delete(), to access application data. So it is easy to implement a content provider.

We need to assign a URI to each Content Provider, starting with “content://” and that will be recognized by applications.

Steps to writing a Content Provider:

1. Create a class for ContentProvider.
2. Define content URI
3. Implement all the unimplemented methods. insert(), update(), query(), delete(), getType().
4. Declare the content provider in AndroidManifest.xml

URI: Content provider URI – content://authority/path/id

1. content:// – The content provider URIs should start with this value.
2. ‘authority’ – This is Java namespace of the content provider implementation passes the Java package name.
3. ‘path’ – This is a virtual directory within the provider that identifies, what kind of data being requested.
4. ‘id’ – This is an optional part that specifies the primary key of a record being requested. This part can be ignored to access all data.

Applying CRUD operations:

Add data:
We need to override insert() method. If data inserted successful, it will return the URI value with the associated with ID.
For example: If we passed – content://packageName/sample
Method will return content://packageName/sample/1

Updating data:
update() method of the ContentProvider is used to update records.
This method will return the number of rows updated.

Deleting data:
delete() method of the ContentProvider will return the number of records deleted.

Registering the provider in AndroidManifest.xml:

We need to register the content providers in the AndroidManifest.xml.

<provider
android:name=".MyProvider"
android:authorities="packageName.MyProvider">
</provider>

<provider

android:name=".MyProvider"

android:authorities="packageName.MyProvider">

</provider>

Kuldeep Singh 29 February 2016

. . .

Chapter 1: Share data between applications using Content Providers

Steps to writing a Content Provider:

URI: Content provider URI – content://authority/path/id

Applying CRUD operations:

Registering the provider in AndroidManifest.xml:

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