SyncAdapter: Account created, requestSync OK, but setSyncAutomatically not Working

Question

I just created an Account for my app.

The account is visible in settings
I set syncable="true" in my XML
I can perform a manual sync by pressing the settings -> onPerformSync is called
I can perform a "code" sync by calling ContentResolver.requestSync -> onPerformSync is called
And of course, yes, the sync is enabled in settings. I don't use any power saver.

I also followed all the steps from here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/5255360/327402

This is my code to get the sync by code

AccountManager am = AccountManager.get(this); 
Account[] accounts = am.getAccountsByType(ACCOUNT);
//Log.e("DEBUG", "Accounts: " + accounts.length);
if (accounts.length == 0) {
    Account account = new Account(getString(R.string.app_name), ACCOUNT);
    ContentResolver.setIsSyncable(account, AUTHORITY, 1);
    ContentResolver.addPeriodicSync(account, AUTHORITY, new Bundle(), 7200);
    ContentResolver.setSyncAutomatically(account, AUTHORITY, true);
    if (am.addAccountExplicitly(account, "pass1", null))
        Log.i("DEBUG", "account Created: " + account.name + ", " + account.type);
    else
        Log.i("DEBUG", "addAccountExplicitly returned false");
    }
else{
    ContentResolver.requestSync(accounts[0], AUTHORITY, new Bundle());// THIS IS WORKING!!!
    }
}

So, everything looks correct and fine.

But unfortunately, I cannot get a periodic sync! When I open the settings, accounts, I see the account and the date and time is the time when I performed the sync by code, or manually.

Any idea on what I did wrong, or what I forgot?

Yes, that's why I used 2 hours in my code, as you can see... :-D — Waza_Be, May 22 '17 at 15:09
This sync setup process can be frustrating. Try setting up your account before setting up your periodic sync. Currently you set up the periodic sync then your account if I am reading your code correctly. — Cheticamp, Jun 12 '17 at 19:59
@Waza_Be Did you add required permission? For ex. for Auto Sync WRITE_SYNC_SETTINGS. — GensaGames, Jun 13 '17 at 17:08
Try creating the account first and use `Bundle.EMPTY` as parameter, not `new Bundle()` — mbo, Jun 14 '17 at 09:12
For future periodic sync'ers. The minimum periodic sync frequency is not an hour. It depends on the API version, 60 seconds for pre API 24, 15 minutes there after. — WillEllis, Nov 19 '17 at 21:48

Cheticamp · Accepted Answer · 2017-07-06T19:19:21.760

Rewrite

I have put together a sample project on GitHub that demonstrates a working SyncAdapter. The project is here.

I have only tried this on an emulator with API 17 since I didn't want to wait around an hour or so (maybe longer now) for a sync to happen. I would suggest that you take this route as well.

On API 17, this demo will do a sync every 30 seconds or so. Everything runs out of the main activity with stub support classes: SyncAdapter, StubProvider, etc. The only thing the sync adapter does is to log a message to logcat that it has run.

I don't really see anything wrong with your code other than, perhaps, the order of the calls to set up the sync is incorrect. Take a look at the call order in the demo for an example of what works.

I hope you find this useful.

(I did this on Android Studio 3.0 Canary 5. I hope this is not an issue.)

I had to add something here as I'd been scratching my head for a day or so before digging around in AOSP codebase. Pre-API 24 the minimum sync frequency is 60 seconds, it will always round this up. You can see this from the logs (Requested poll frequency of " + runAtTime + " seconds being rounded up to 60 seconds.) or by looking at the syncs returned by ContentResolver.getPeriodicSyncs(account, CONTENT_AUTHORITY); Post-API 24 the minimum sync period is now 15 minutes. So all values below this will be rounded up to 15 minutes. — WillEllis, Nov 19 '17 at 21:42

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 04 '17 at 13:01

One important thing to remember is that the periodic sync time is not guaranteed and may not be accurate, this is mentioned in the documentation:

Although these sync are scheduled at the specified frequency, it may take longer for it to actually be started if other syncs are ahead of it in the sync operation queue. This means that the actual start time may drift.

I would also try to create the account using AccountManager and not by creating new Account()

 manager.addAccountExplicitly(account, null, null)

And last thing, if this account was just created than you may want to force only the first sync right after you set the automatic sync settings:

 if (accountJustCreated) { 
   SyncAdapter.performSync();
 }

Your last tip is what I did and work fine, but the periodic part is not wiorking at all despite ContentResolver.addPeriodicSync(account, AUTHORITY, new Bundle(), 7200); — Waza_Be, Jul 06 '17 at 14:32

SyncAdapter: Account created, requestSync OK, but setSyncAutomatically not Working

2 Answers2