Background
I work on an app that needs to get information of "other contacts" as they appear on the address book page on "Contacts" website of Google:
The problem
The Contacts API is becoming deprecated, and instead we need to use People API.
For this, I use the Java library (here) which makes it easier to reach the various functions.
Sadly, according to the docs (here), querying the list of items from "other contacts" you will get only up to 3 possible fields:
emailAddresses
names
phoneNumbers
Indeed, when using it, that's what I got. I also got fields of "etag" and "resourceName", but that's it. No photos, no cover photos, no nothing else...
The code to do it is very short (after you set everything up) :
val otherContactsResponse =
otherContacts.list().setReadMask("emailAddresses,names,phoneNumbers")
.setPageSize(itemsCountToRequest).setPageToken(nextPageToken).execute()
val result=otherContactsResponse.otherContacts
What I've tried
I tried to see if I can query by "reourceName" (example this one), but it seems that "other contacts" are handled differently than normal ones, so this won't work:
result.forEach { personBasic: Person ->
val test: Person? = peopleService.get(personBasic.resourceName!!)
.setPersonFields(
"addresses,ageRanges,birthdays,coverPhotos,emailAddresses,genders,metadata,names,nicknames,occupations,organizations,phoneNumbers,photos,urls")
.execute()
Log.d("AppLog", "$test")
}
Sadly there is no similar query for "other contacts" part to search (other than here, which gives you again the same 3 fields).
Tried to find if there are other fields that I missed that could be used somewhere else. I don't even know if resourceName or etag are reliable and unique for querying.
Tried to add more fields to the query, despite the docs talking about just 3 fields. Failed, of course...
There is a function called copyOtherContactToMyContactsGroup (here) which seems that it will copy contacts to the main group of contacts. I guess that if I use this and then query the contacts themselves (not just "other contacts"), I could get the needed information. But this is a waste of time and can pollute the user's address book, even temporarily. I would have to make sure I delete the contacts from there right after I add them...
EDIT: tried this too, and while it seems to work, I don't want to use it as it pollutes the address book with contacts that the users hasn't added. Plus I got sometimes an image which is simply the letter of the person with a background. This is the code of it:
result.firstOrNull { !it.names.isNullOrEmpty()&&!it.emailAddresses.isNullOrEmpty() }?.let { person ->
val request =
CopyOtherContactToMyContactsGroupRequest().setCopyMask(
"emailAddresses,names,phoneNumbers")
.setReadMask(
"addresses,ageRanges,birthdays,coverPhotos,emailAddresses,genders,metadata,names,nicknames,occupations,organizations,phoneNumbers,photos,urls")
val copyResult: Person? =
services!!.otherContacts.copyOtherContactToMyContactsGroup(
person.resourceName, request).execute()
Log.d("AppLog", "success $copyResult")
}
Also, this seems to be extremely slow compared to simple queries, and there is no batch operation for it either. In addition, testing it out, I think it can cause various server issues related to quota being reached (about 180 per minute or so).
I think that as the website shows the photos and can show you per-contact information, we should have this API too, no?
I thought that maybe I could create a new group (label) , copy the "other contacts" to there, and then fetch the information from there (as it allows to get more fields), but the docs (here) say that it was possible before, and not anymore:
The only system contact groups that can have members added are contactGroups/myContacts and contactGroups/starred. Other system contact groups are deprecated and can only have contacts removed.
This is a bit better solution (if it worked) as I can remove groups safely without affecting actual contacts.
The question
What's the best way that I should use in order to get all kinds of information (like normal contacts) about each item in the "other contacts" list? Is it possible without copying to the contacts list and without getting "fake" photos (of the contact initial letter) ?
OK so sadly for now I got a workaround.
First I copy the various fields to a new Person object, one for each of the results of the query, then I add them all using a batchCreateContacts (here, max items per batch is ), and then I deleted them all using batchDeleteContacts (here , max items per batch is 500)
Sadly this still pollutes the address book, but it's much faster than what I've found, and it's quite temporary too.
Weird things I've found :
API usage doesn't seem to show the exact same items as on the website. I know because I tried to find names and emails on the website that I've found from the API but it didn't show them. Even weirder: The count of items seems the same between them
Some items just have names, which is weird because: how did they get there?
"Other" contacts are different from "normal" contacts and have less information available, but why is this? I looked into this a little and found the following:
Save contact info when you interact with people
When you interact with people on Google products, you can automatically save their contact info, including names, email addresses, and phone numbers. When this setting is turned on, you'll keep the contact info for:
People you've shared something with, like a document in Drive
People who share content with you, like shared albums in Google Photos
People included in events or groups you're in
I think that these are the "other" contacts that become a sort of staging ground with minimal collected information.
I have also found that, on the Google Contacts web page that whenever I add information to an "other contact," the contact automatically disappears from the "other" section and appears with the regular contacts.
So, from the web interface, it looks like "other" contacts should only have the minimal information such as name, email address and phone numbers and should be promoted to the regular contact list if information is added/updated. This scenario will explain why "other" contacts are treated differently.
If you are seeing "other" contacts with more than the minimal information, maybe that is the problem.
Update: Well, it turns out that any "normal" contact can be hidden in the web interface and all the information is transferred with the contact to the "other contacts" list, so "other" contacts can have more than the minimal information.
This looks like an unintended state of affairs to me.
So I'm making an app that asks users for their percentage and then give them a list of colleges that they can apply to. There's just one problem, the colleges release four different lists of cut-offs over a span of four weeks, and I want the app to be made in such a way that the I don't have to update a static list inside the app and make the user download the updated version but rather to make the app read that data from a remote location? Is that possible?
Hi everyone i'am currently developing an android game, it uses your phone number when you first use the game(it is for an identification of the user).
It is an social game at some time when the user requests it returns a list of people who are currently online(playing the game),as json array(there phone number,name,photo)and from the data received you need to filter it out and display in two list views. The filtering done by this method:
1)Each element from JSON data(each person)if there phone number is found in user's contact list then is displayed in the first listview
2)if the number is not found in users contact list it is displayed in second listview.
But my doubt is that if the JSON array returns details of 10 people, you need to check for this 10 people whether they are in user's contact list.And does this kind of a technique takes a lot of time and creates delay in the UI..?
If yes please suggest me some other method.
Also please tell me how can I check whether a number is in user's contact list(I make the users upload there number to server without any country code).
So please in the number finding method you need to end the checking one a number has been fully completed.(starting from the end.
eg : 8086934565 (no saved in database) +918086934565(no in contact list)
then we need to start from last so that
5==5 then continue
6==6 then continue
till any of the no (+918086934565 or 8086934565) ends without breaking any equivalent condition.
eg for numbers +918086934565 and 8086933365
checking from the last
5==5,6==6, 5!=3 there the equivalent condition goes wrong and hence it should get out from the loop with a flag ie the numbers are not equal.
Please write me the function to do this or tell me an alternative method.
Any help would be appreciable.
Thanks.
Ugh, that's painful to read...haha...You're suggesting using phone numbers to identify users in a multiplayer matchmaking scenario? That's taboo...If you return a JSON array of users phone numbers, names, and photos, your app will almost certainly be permanently banned from the market and possibly your entire account. That is about the biggest security risk that I can possibly think of, you might as well have a textfield where everybody types in their social security number and it posts it to craigslist. Basically any of your users could just repeatedly initiate games with people and get names photos and phone numbers of 10 random people at a time by capturing the plain text JSON data coming back. If I were you I'd look into the facebook sdk for authentication or Google Play Game Services for multiplayer matchmaking unless the core mechanics of your game rely on phone numbers specifically, in which case by it's very nature is just not going to fly with users. Asking someone to write you a function to do that is most likely never going to happen on stackoverflow. I'm not even going to get into the last part of the question...This has to be a troll attempt...lol
We are not including photos as an option in our .find but the cordova.contacts plugin still gets all of the contact photos and puts them into temporary folders.
On phones where all contacts have photos this can take 10 seconds or more and fills up the memory... often crashing the device if it has to run a second time.
At the moment I am having to completely remove any part of the plugin that mentions the photos, as such it is all or nothing instead of just being able to get back a photo for chosen contacts.
So in summary
- cordova.contacts always gets all contact photos even if you don't say you want them
- what can be done to disable that when spooling the entire address book
- but still have the ability to call in a photo for specific contacts when needed
Is this perhaps a bug?
As per the docs, use contactFindOptions.desiredFields parameter to control which contact properties must be returned back.
I am writing an app that allows the user to select from a list of names and then add one of the names (with phone number, etc) to their contacts. When I retrieve my phone's list of Contact Accounts, I am getting 3 results: "Phone", "a000000229aa3e....", "Gmail".
The center result, "a000000229aa3e...." is not an account that I have setup or appears anywhere else on my phone. This also does not appear in the emulator.
My coworker ran it on hit Droid (original Droid) and did not get the odd account. I am running it on a Droid X.
Does anyone know where this Contact Group is coming from? Is there something I need to do to filter this out?
I was able to get the name and type for the odd contact account:
Account Name: a00000229aa3e5-8877431712057062230#random.svcmot.com
Account Type: com.motorola.blur.service.bsutils.MOTHER_USER_CREDS_TYPE
From what I could gather, MOTHER_USER_CREDS_TYPE indicates some sort of Motorola/Provider created account... I ended up filtering this out with !(mAccounts.get(i).getType().toString().contains("MOTHER_USER_CREDS_TYPE")) - I don't know if this will hold up across all devices but it fixed my problem, for the moment.
I don't know all that much about Android apps, but is your phone made by Motorola? or was your previous phone made by Motorola and you copied settings across?
If so it could be a default account, can you see this account when not using your application?