Android retrieve a set of contacts similar to built in Contacts app

Question

I'm using code like the following, and on my phone it returns 4000+ rows, but on my phone I have 295 contacts in the Contacts app.

Whats going on here? I've been reading up on the contacts database, and I'm not yet familiar enough to figure this out.

Thanks!

    final ContentResolver cr = getContentResolver();
    final Cursor cur = cr.query(ContactsContract.Contacts.CONTENT_URI, null, null, null, null);

    List<Contact> contacts = new ArrayList<>();

    final int nameIdx = cur.getColumnIndex(DISPLAY_NAME);
    final int idIdx = cur.getColumnIndex(ContactsContract.Contacts._ID);

    while (cur.moveToNext()) {
      String name = cur.getString(nameIdx);
      String id = cur.getString(idIdx);
      contacts.add(new Contact(name, id));
    }
    cur.close();

Passing a `null` projection will return all the columns. [Docs](https://developer.android.com/reference/android/content/ContentResolver.html) — adneal, Jan 18 '15 at 00:08
You probably want to use `ContactsContract.Contacts.HAS_PHONE_NUMBER = 1` as your `selection `argument — Karakuri, Jan 18 '15 at 03:58
As I mentioned below I don't care if they have a phone number or not. What I ended up doing is using IN_DEFAULT_DIRECTORY=1 as my selection. — waterlooalex, Jan 18 '15 at 04:27

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 18 '15 at 20:00

The solution is to filter for contacts that have IN_VISIBLE_GROUP = 1.

    final String selection = String.format("%s = ?", ContactsContract.Contacts.IN_VISIBLE_GROUP);
    final String[] selectionArgs = new String[] { "1" };
    final Cursor cur = cr.query(ContactsContract.Contacts.CONTENT_URI, projection, selection, selectionArgs, null);

I also tried IN_DEFAULT_DIRECTORY = 1 which also worked well but is only supported on Lollipop (21) and newer.

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 04 '16 at 07:50

I am had a similar problem in Android 6. Some of the contacts were not showing up when you query using

ContactsContract.Contacts.IN_VISIBLE_GROUP = 1

Then I changed the selection to

String selection = "in_default_directory = 1"; // Aka ContactsContract.ContactsColumns.IN_DEFAULT_DIRECTORY
String[] selectionArgs = null;
String sortOrder = ContactsContract.Contacts.DISPLAY_NAME + " COLLATE LOCALIZED ASC";
Cursor nameCursor = context.getContentResolver().query(uri, null, selection, selectionArgs, sortOrder);

Now it returns all the contacts as per Contact app.

Android retrieve a set of contacts similar to built in Contacts app

2 Answers2