How can I read SMS messages from the device programmatically in Android?

Question

I want to retrieve the SMS messages from the device and display them?

Answer 1

There are lots of answers are already available but i think all of them are missing an important part of this question. Before reading data from an internal database or its table we have to understand how data is stored in it and then we can find the solution of the above question that is :

How can I read SMS messages from the device programmatically in Android?

So,In android SMS table is like look like this

Know,we can select whatever we want from the database.In our case we have only required

id,address and body

In case of reading SMS:

1.Ask for permissions

int REQUEST_PHONE_CALL = 1;

   if (ContextCompat.checkSelfPermission(MainActivity.this, Manifest.permission.READ_SMS) != PackageManager.PERMISSION_GRANTED) {
            ActivityCompat.requestPermissions(MainActivity.this, new String[]{Manifest.permission.READ_SMS}, REQUEST_PHONE_CALL);
        }

or

2.Now your code goes like this

// Create Inbox box URI
Uri inboxURI = Uri.parse("content://sms/inbox");

// List required columns
String[] reqCols = new String[]{"_id", "address", "body"};

// Get Content Resolver object, which will deal with Content Provider
ContentResolver cr = getContentResolver();

// Fetch Inbox SMS Message from Built-in Content Provider
Cursor c = cr.query(inboxURI, reqCols, null, null, null);

// Attached Cursor with adapter and display in listview
adapter = new SimpleCursorAdapter(this, R.layout.a1_row, c,
        new String[]{"body", "address"}, new int[]{
        R.id.A1_txt_Msg, R.id.A1_txt_Number});
lst.setAdapter(adapter);

I hope this one will be helpful. Thanks.