Develop Reference

Loaders - why use them?

Could you point out or recommend reading on pros of using Loader regarding network/sqlite requests?
The only implementation - CursorLoader says it uses a ContentResolver. ContentResolvers as I read are used in conjunction with ContentProviders, which purpose is to expose inner-application data. It seems a bit messed up to me since I only intend to load data for internal usage. I cant see any point/benefits of using Loaders - what's bad with using ORM tool like greenDao in conjunction with plain AsyncTasks?
Are there design benefits? easy DI?

The CursorLoader is a very convinient method for querying because it takes care of the thread in an asyncronously manner. There is a lot of info here about it, you just have to search it. Here are two links that might help you to understand them.
Check inside Stackoverflow and full explanation on an expert blog.
Good luck!

Should I use a Content Provider?

I'm reading the official documentation from android's content providers and I've seen this:
Decide if you need a content provider.
You need to build a content
provider if you want to provide one or more of the following features:
You want to offer complex data or files to other applications.
You want to allow users to copy complex data from your app into other
apps.
You want to provide custom search suggestions using the search
framework.
You don't need a provider to use an SQLite database if the
use is entirely within your own application.
I'm developing an app that syncs data on background when the position changes through an IntentService.
What I've seen is that with ContentProvider you could observe when data changes which I really want without user noticing it. It changes in IntentService and MainActivity observes this changes and when it's notificated, layout content change
Is it a great idea to use a ContentProvider although they don't even mention this?
Thanks

Personally, I have been using ContentProviders in all my projects for the last year and a half. They provide good, database independent, data abstraction to access your data. They are very flexible, I even had a play project where one URI pointed to a SharedPreference while all others where for accessing database tables. ContentProviders also allow you to use already built framework infrastructure such as CursorLoaders, for example. Implementing your own from interfaces and abstract classes is not that hard, but it may be time consuming and error prone, being able to just leverage work that's already been tried and tested is a great advantage.
By the way, I remember the same exact question on a post in google+ about 2 weeks ago where Cyril Mottier gave a very good answer. You can read it here.

Using CursorLoaders in a Searchable Activity

I'm trying to create a Searchable Activity to be used with the Action Bar.
I have a CursorAdapter supplying the data from a ContentProvider.
What I have trouble understanding is why does the API examples, ie, searchableDictonary, performs a managedQuery instead of doing something async with the CursorLoaders.
Perhaps I'm missing something?

Because this example is fairly old and CursorLoaders didn't exist at the time. If loaders work for you, do use them. Are you having any specific problem?

How to deal with a database in Android's Tab Activity

So I have an Android app that is running in a TabActivity that separates 3 different activities through this tabs. I've set a DatabaseHandler class with SQLite and all, fine.
The thing is, so far I don't really know how to deal with the database since it will be receiving data from one of the activities and I need to be showing that data in a different one. I don't know if I should declare the db in the main TabActivity or where, I've never worked with SQL in Android before and I'm pretty lost at the moment.
I tried to picture it so it is more understandable: Explanatory Graph (Sorry, I don't have enough reputation yet to post the image into the post directly)
Thanks in advance.

Although using your DatabaseHandler is posssible within each activity in the long term I think most non-trivial apps would benefit from using a ContentProvider
ContentProvider provides an abstraction over your data. It becomes really powerful when you combine it with a CursorLoader and LoaderManager available back to Android 1.6 by using the support library.
These concepts require a bit of study but will make sharing data across multiple Fragment or Activities simpler and less error prone.
Mobile Tuts has a couple of good tutorials that are worth reading on top of the official Android documentation and examples:
http://mobile.tutsplus.com/tutorials/android/android-sdk_content-providers/
http://mobile.tutsplus.com/tutorials/android/android-sdk_loading-data_cursorloader/

You should be okay, as long as you close your connection with the database as soon as you're done reading/writing to the database.
Each activity should be able to have their own DatabaseHandler.

Android Sqlite without ContentProvider

Is it possible to successfully use Sqlite on Android without also having to use a ContentProvider?
Can someone show me a sample that doesn't use ContentProvider?
And if it is indeed true that Sqlite can be successfully used without it, what are examples of cases where ContentProvider would be necessary?

This site does an excellent job describing how to use SQLite in Android without managing to ever once use the term 'ContentProvider.'
A simple Google search such as Android SQLite tutorial -"ContentProvider" will show many many more examples.
Google is your friend.

You need to be aware that SQLite database isn't thread safe, so if you intend to have more than the one thread running at any time accessing the database, you'll definitely run into more problems than in implementing a ContentProvider.
I strongly recommend having a ContentProvider as you can bake all the difficult SQL that cannot be mapped to ContentProvider queries into URIs instead.