BroadcastReceiver for Android Calendar events

Question

I am trying to write a BroadcastReceiver that listens to events like insert, edit, delete to the native android calendar (ICS and above). So whenever one of these events occ

Answer 1

Finally found the solution after a lot of reading, this may help other finding a similar solution.

In the Manifest, you need to write these lines to be able to capture the changes:

<receiver
   android:name=".NativeEventChangeReceiver">
        <intent-filter>
            <action android:name="android.intent.action.PROVIDER_CHANGED"/>
            <data android:scheme="content"/>
            <data android:host="com.android.calendar"/>
        </intent-filter>
</receiver>

Cheers,

Answer 2

In addition to the accepted answer:

The intent broadcasted by this code is send when any change is made to the calendar data:

<receiver
   android:name=".NativeEventChangeReceiver">
        <intent-filter>
            <action android:name="android.intent.action.PROVIDER_CHANGED"/>
            <data android:scheme="content"/>
            <data android:host="com.android.calendar"/>
        </intent-filter>
</receiver>

Unfortunatly, it is also broadcasted when the device boots, or when the provider is created and there are no Extra's to read what so ever.

To make your app only handle insertion/deletion of event instances:

Keep track of the total number of event-instances (as SagiLow points out, this only works on add/delete and does not take updates into account). If it changed, re-validate your data based on the users calendar:

public class CalendarChangedReceiver extends BroadcastReceiver
{
    private static final String TAG = "CalendarChangedReceiver";
    @Override
    public void onReceive(Context context, Intent intent) {
        //Check number of instances
        final SharedPreferences prefs = context.getSharedPreferences(Enums.Config.USER_CONSTANTS, Context.MODE_PRIVATE);`enter code here`
        long lastTimeValidated =  prefs.getLong(AppData.LONG_LAST_TIME_VALIDATED, 0);


      int numRowsLastTimeValidated =  prefs.getInt(AppData.INT_NUM_ROWS_LAST_TIME_VALIDATED, 0);
        int numberOfInstances = getNumberOfInstances(lastTimeValidated, context);
        if(numberOfInstances != numRowsLastTimeValidated) {                    

            /* Do somethng here, for instance:
            Intent serviceIntent = new Intent(context, ValidateCalendarEventsService.class);
            context.startService(serviceIntent);    
            */

        }
    }

    private int getNumberOfInstances(long lastTimeValidated, Context context) {
        Calendar beginTime = Calendar.getInstance();


   beginTime.setTimeInMillis(lastTimeValidated);
        Calendar endTime = Calendar.getInstance();
        endTime.add(Calendar.YEAR, 1);
        endTime.add(Calendar.DAY_OF_MONTH, 1);//now + 366
        long startMillis = beginTime.getTimeInMillis();
        long endMillis = endTime.getTimeInMillis();
        Cursor cur = null;
        ContentResolver cr = context.getContentResolver();
        // Construct the query with the desired date range.
        Uri.Builder builder = CalendarContract.Instances.CONTENT_URI.buildUpon();
        ContentUris.appendId(builder, startMillis);
        ContentUris.appendId(builder, endMillis);
        // Submit the query
        cur = cr.query(builder.build(), null, null, null, null);
        //handle results
        return cur.getCount();
    }
}