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.
I have checked the previous helpful suggestions on this topic and needed further clarity and help.
We are making a chat App. We require mobile number syncing from contacts. However my problem is here:
App can theoretically be used by anybody in the world. Let us say an US based user X has downloaded and is wanting to use it.
Once X registers, App starts syncing his contacts to display all of his contacts who are using this App.
X can have contacts from all over the world in his contact list and both landline and mobile numbers against various contacts.
For his US based contacts, X may have saved mobile numbers without countrycode, some with 001, some with country code +1.
For his foreign contacts, X may have saved landline/mobile number and those too in different formats (00 countrycode, + countrycode, with space, without space etc).
What i request help on is this:
When App starts syncing X's contacts to check if his contacts' mobile number also have my App (and this display that contact in my App's contacts), how do I check the individual contact's numbers, countrycodes and only mobile number? As going one country at a time is an inefficient way to do it, there must be some awesome solution here.
Any help please?
Thanks.
In my android application I would like to display the mobile user's contacts (names, profile picture ) displaying first the contacts that have already installed and registrered that application (the matching is made by contact's email).
Trying to loop over each contact and match if their email is already registered (in an external SQLITE table) don't seems to be an efficient way.
I would like to directly add (somewhere in the address book ?) the extra data "isRegistered = true/false) and order my addreess book query by this value to scroll the address book.
Is it possible? How to implement this in detail ?
OPTION 1
I think the most efficient way would be what you thought about initially, with a slight improvement:
store the list of registered emails (for the user's contacts) in a local SQLite DB.
read the entire list of emails on application launch, and store them in a HashSet
When sorting the contacts, create a custom Comparator to first check if the contact is an app user or not, and only then fallback to name compare.
OPTION 2
If you still want to check the option of storing the custom value in the Contacts DB, and integrate it into your query, you need to create a SyncAdapter.
This is basically a service that is able to sync contacts to/from a server into your own RawContact, which is then aggregated into one-or-more existing RawContacts, like Google does for Google Contacts.
You can set it to be notified when a new contact is added, and have your SyncAdapter add the needed info to the contact so it'll show links to your app.
If you go to your phone settings > accounts, you can see Whatsapp and Google's SyncAdapters there, where you can turn them off/on.
To create a sync adapter, you can follow the official docs, or this great tutorial.
My app lets the user select a contact using the contact picker. Afterward lets user selects one or phone phone number to be stored for later use (the numbers are stored in the db)
The trivial solution would have been to save the selected numbers to the database as strings. However I would like to avoid duplicating parts of the the device's contacts list and keep a link (e.g. a URI to a particular number) to that contact.
so far was not able to find a way to do that, the documentation states that the contact id itself might change, So I can only assume it also true for the contacts phone number.
am I missing something ?
I'm pretty sure it's not viable to do what I'd like to based on some initial research, but I figured it couldn't hurt to ask the community of experts here in case someone knows a way.
I'd like to create a custom field for contacts that the user is able to edit from the main Contacts app; however, the user should only be allowed to select from a list of four specific values. A short list of string values would be ideal, but an int with a min/max range would suffice.
I'm interested in knowing if it's possible either way, but also wondering if it make sense to go this route performance wise. More specifically, would it be better to look up a contact (based on a phone number) each time a call or SMS message is received or better to store my own set of data (consisting of name, numbers, and the custom field) and just syncing contact info in a thread every so often? Or syncing contacts the first time the app is run and then registering for changes using ContentObserver?
Here is a similar question with an answer that explains how to add a custom field to a contact.
Thanks in advance.
I don't see the purpose to have your own set of data against contacts stored in your separate database, as you obviously will run into sync issues. You can use the mimetype and store whatever you want against the contact, in the manner you linked.
Whenever you want to looup contacts you can do that by using your custom mimetype. You get the contact id (from ContactsContract.Data.CONTENT_URI), and then you run another query to get the contact details (from ContactsContract.Contacts.CONTENT_URI). Please note these are different tables.
I'd like to create a custom field for contacts that the user is able to edit from the main Contacts app
I don't see that possible, editable from the main app, when you use your custom mimetypes, and you don't have much options here. The main contact app will display only the fields that are in SDK. You can store details against contacts but they won't show up in the inbuilt edit contact screen.