Hook some regular tasks?

Question

I'm wondering if the following is possible:

I've an app (service) that stays in background, and gets triggered whenever the user

• Adds/deletes/updates a contact
• Installs/uninstalls an app
• Adds/deletes/renames a file on the FS

Do you think this is possible guys? (in a proper way of course, if it's possible to do it by hacking and dirty stuff I'd pass)

I tried to look over the internet a bit but didn't find discussions related to this point.

What's your guess ?

Answer 1

Haven't tried any of this myself, but:

http://mylifewithandroid.blogspot.com/2008/03/observing-content.html seems to deal with detecting contact data changes. Basically you need to register a ContentObserver and handle the changes you are notified of.

Check out http://developer.android.com/reference/android/content/Intent.html - from that you can register a BroadcastReceiver to be notified of applications being installed or uninstalled. Look for ACTION_PACKAGE_ADDED and ACTION_PACKAGE_REMOVED

Please refer to How to detect file or folder changes in Android? for how to detect when files are changed in the filesystem. You may be limited to your sandbox with a FileObserver, I'm not sure. Also - a rename doesn't seem to be explicitly notified, but you will probably detect it from a MOVED_FROM followed by MOVED_TO, or possibly a DELETE followed by CREATE

Answer 2

Found in the SDK sample for SDK version 5+:

     /**
     * Retrieves the contact information.
     */
    @Override
    public ContactInfo loadContact(ContentResolver contentResolver, Uri contactUri) {
        ContactInfo contactInfo = new ContactInfo();
        long contactId = -1;

        // Load the display name for the specified person
        Cursor cursor = contentResolver.query(contactUri,
                new String[]{Contacts._ID, Contacts.DISPLAY_NAME}, null, null, null);
        try {
            if (cursor.moveToFirst()) {
                contactId = cursor.getLong(0);
                contactInfo.setDisplayName(cursor.getString(1));
            }
        } finally {
            cursor.close();
        }

        // Load the phone number (if any).
        cursor = contentResolver.query(Phone.CONTENT_URI,
                new String[]{Phone.NUMBER},
                Phone.CONTACT_ID + "=" + contactId, null, Phone.IS_SUPER_PRIMARY + " DESC");
        try {
            if (cursor.moveToFirst()) {
                contactInfo.setPhoneNumber(cursor.getString(0));
            }
        } finally {
            cursor.close();
        }

        return contactInfo;
    }

You can specify the contact columns you want to retreive with Cursor cursor = contentResolver.query(contactUri, new String[]{Contacts._ID, Contacts.DISPLAY_NAME}, null, null, null); The column names are described at http://developer.android.com/reference/android/provider/ContactsContract.Contacts.html and looking at the sample, it seems cursor.getLong(0) here is the contact ID you're looking for. It also seems that it is volatile depending on how the contact is edited and how others are added, but you're catching those too so you should be able to handle those cases.