contact | Tech Tips & Tricks

GMail Team! Google Contacts Photo Needs High Resolution!

August 23, 2012 by blogmeister·4 Comments

Man! This has really gotten me pissed! When Jellybean came out with the announcement that it will support higher resolution images (720×720) compared to what Ice Cream Sandwich did (2562×256), I was really excited.

But even when I sync my Android smartphone with Google Contacts, the contact photos still revert back to 96×96 versions.

I wondered why it took them very long to do something about this and I found out that it had been a few years back when this issue was raised. More than 3 years have passed and the GMail team still had not done anything.

So maybe they are doing something about it … but … 3 years have passed and not even a 256×256 support has not been incorporated.

This is actually the only feature I am looking forward if I were to upgrade my Android OS to Jellybean. I just want to see my contacts’ photos in high resolution.

Get Age Of Contact In Android

May 18, 2012 by blogmeister·0 Comments

There is no shortcut in getting a contact’s age in Android. What I did instead was to get the birthday of the contact (if any is provided) and subtracted that from the current year.

The output of a contact’s birthday is a string formatted date with dashes (-) so I had to make a helper method to parse it; get the month, date and year; convert it to a Date object, then do calculation to get the age of the contact.

Check out the helper method below.

public static int calculateAge(int year, int month, int day) {
    Date now = new Date();
    int nowMonth = now.getMonth()+1;
    int nowYear = now.getYear()+1900;
    int result = nowYear - year;
    if (month > nowMonth) {
        result--;
    }
    else if (month == nowMonth) {
        int nowDay = now.getDate();
        if (day > nowDay) {
            result--;
        }
    }
    return result;
}

public static int calculateAge(int year, int month, int day) {

Date now = new Date();

int nowMonth = now.getMonth()+1;

int nowYear = now.getYear()+1900;

int result = nowYear - year;

if (month > nowMonth) {

result--;

}

else if (month == nowMonth) {

int nowDay = now.getDate();

if (day > nowDay) {

result--;

}

return result;

}

And this is how I retrieved the birthday of the contact from the contact list. Once retrieved, I parsed the output and passed it to the calculateAge() method.

public static int getAge(Context ctx, String contactId) {
    int age = 0;
    ContentResolver cr = ctx.getContentResolver();
    String columns[] = {
        ContactsContract.CommonDataKinds.Event.START_DATE,
        ContactsContract.CommonDataKinds.Event.TYPE,
        ContactsContract.CommonDataKinds.Event.MIMETYPE,
    };
    String where = Event.TYPE + "=" + Event.TYPE_BIRTHDAY + 
            " and " + Event.MIMETYPE + " = '" + Event.CONTENT_ITEM_TYPE + "' and " + 
            ContactsContract.Data.CONTACT_ID + " = " + contactId;
    String[] selectionArgs = null;
    String sortOrder = ContactsContract.Contacts.DISPLAY_NAME;
    Cursor cur = cr.query(ContactsContract.Data.CONTENT_URI, columns, where, selectionArgs, sortOrder); 
    if (cur.getCount() > 0) {
        while (cur.moveToNext()) {
            String[] sage = cur.getString(cur.getColumnIndex(ContactsContract.CommonDataKinds.Event.START_DATE)).split("-");
            age = calculateAge(sage[0], sage[1], sage[2]);
        }
    }
    cur.close();
    return age;
}

public static int getAge(Context ctx, String contactId) {

int age = 0;

ContentResolver cr = ctx.getContentResolver();

String columns[] = {

ContactsContract.CommonDataKinds.Event.START_DATE,

ContactsContract.CommonDataKinds.Event.TYPE,

ContactsContract.CommonDataKinds.Event.MIMETYPE,

};

String where = Event.TYPE + "=" + Event.TYPE_BIRTHDAY +

" and " + Event.MIMETYPE + " = '" + Event.CONTENT_ITEM_TYPE + "' and " +

ContactsContract.Data.CONTACT_ID + " = " + contactId;

String[] selectionArgs = null;

String sortOrder = ContactsContract.Contacts.DISPLAY_NAME;

Cursor cur = cr.query(ContactsContract.Data.CONTENT_URI, columns, where, selectionArgs, sortOrder);

if (cur.getCount() > 0) {

while (cur.moveToNext()) {

String[] sage = cur.getString(cur.getColumnIndex(ContactsContract.CommonDataKinds.Event.START_DATE)).split("-");

age = calculateAge(sage[0], sage[1], sage[2]);

}

cur.close();

return age;

}

Get List Of Contacts With Phone Numbers And Email Address In Android

May 16, 2012 by blogmeister·0 Comments

The Contacts API in Android has evolved over the years and the current one has many changes that existing code I found in forums to get the list of contacts do not give the results that I wanted.

In my own way, the code below shows how I retrieve the details of contacts. It retrieves the contact’s display name, email and phone number.

ContentResolver cr = ctx.getContentResolver();
String[] projection = new String[] { ContactsContract.Contacts._ID, ContactsContract.Contacts.DISPLAY_NAME };
Cursor cur = cr.query(ContactsContract.Contacts.CONTENT_URI, projection, null, null,
        ContactsContract.Contacts.DISPLAY_NAME + " COLLATE LOCALIZED ASC");
if (cur.getCount() > 0) {
    while (cur.moveToNext()) {
    	System.out.println(cur.getString(cur.getColumnIndex(ContactsContract.Data._ID)));
    	System.out.println(cur.getString(cur.getColumnIndex(ContactsContract.Data.DISPLAY_NAME)));    	
	Cursor pCur = cr.query(ContactsContract.CommonDataKinds.Phone.CONTENT_URI, 
			null, ContactsContract.CommonDataKinds.Phone.CONTACT_ID +" = ?", 
			new String[]{ c.getId() }, null);
	while (pCur.moveToNext()) {
		System.out.println(.add(pCur.getString(
		pCur.getColumnIndex(ContactsContract.CommonDataKinds.Phone.NUMBER)));
	} 
	pCur.close();
    	Cursor emailCur = cr.query(ContactsContract.CommonDataKinds.Email.CONTENT_URI, 
    			null, ContactsContract.CommonDataKinds.Email.CONTACT_ID + " = ?", 
    			new String[]{ c.getId() }, null); 
    	while (emailCur.moveToNext()) { 
		System.out.println((emailCur.getString(
		emailCur.getColumnIndex(ContactsContract.CommonDataKinds.Email.DATA)));
	}
    }
}
cur.close();

ContentResolver cr = ctx.getContentResolver();

String[] projection = new String[] { ContactsContract.Contacts._ID, ContactsContract.Contacts.DISPLAY_NAME };

Cursor cur = cr.query(ContactsContract.Contacts.CONTENT_URI, projection, null, null,

ContactsContract.Contacts.DISPLAY_NAME + " COLLATE LOCALIZED ASC");

if (cur.getCount() > 0) {

while (cur.moveToNext()) {

System.out.println(cur.getString(cur.getColumnIndex(ContactsContract.Data._ID)));

System.out.println(cur.getString(cur.getColumnIndex(ContactsContract.Data.DISPLAY_NAME)));

Cursor pCur = cr.query(ContactsContract.CommonDataKinds.Phone.CONTENT_URI,

null, ContactsContract.CommonDataKinds.Phone.CONTACT_ID +" = ?",

new String[]{ c.getId() }, null);

while (pCur.moveToNext()) {

System.out.println(.add(pCur.getString(

pCur.getColumnIndex(ContactsContract.CommonDataKinds.Phone.NUMBER)));

}

pCur.close();

Cursor emailCur = cr.query(ContactsContract.CommonDataKinds.Email.CONTENT_URI,

null, ContactsContract.CommonDataKinds.Email.CONTACT_ID + " = ?",

new String[]{ c.getId() }, null);

while (emailCur.moveToNext()) {

System.out.println((emailCur.getString(

emailCur.getColumnIndex(ContactsContract.CommonDataKinds.Email.DATA)));

}

cur.close();

Tech Tips & Tricks

tech tips gadgets programming software

Tag: contact

GMail Team! Google Contacts Photo Needs High Resolution!

Get Age Of Contact In Android