I went through the exact same problem. Since then I build my own solution which is inspired from this post yet a bit different. Now I'd like to share it as my first StackOverFlow answer :-)
Its quite similar to the double cursor approach suggested by Jens. The idea is to
1- fetch relevant contact from the Contacts table
2- fetch relevant Contacts information (mail, phone, ...)
3- combine these results
The "relevant" is up to you of course but the important point is the performance !
Besides, I'm sure other solutions using well suited SQL query might as well do the job but here I only want to use the Android ContentProvider
Here is the code :
Some constants
public static String CONTACT_ID_URI = ContactsContract.Contacts._ID;
public static String DATA_CONTACT_ID_URI = ContactsContract.Data.CONTACT_ID;
public static String MIMETYPE_URI = ContactsContract.Data.MIMETYPE;
public static String EMAIL_URI = ContactsContract.CommonDataKinds.Email.DATA;
public static String PHONE_URI = ContactsContract.CommonDataKinds.Phone.DATA;
public static String NAME_URI = (Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= Build.VERSION_CODES.HONEYCOMB) ? ContactsContract.Data.DISPLAY_NAME_PRIMARY : ContactsContract.Data.DISPLAY_NAME;
public static String PICTURE_URI = (Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= Build.VERSION_CODES.HONEYCOMB) ? ContactsContract.Contacts.PHOTO_THUMBNAIL_URI : ContactsContract.Contacts.PHOTO_ID;
public static String MAIL_TYPE = ContactsContract.CommonDataKinds.Email.CONTENT_ITEM_TYPE;
public static String PHONE_TYPE = ContactsContract.CommonDataKinds.Phone.CONTENT_ITEM_TYPE;
1 Contact
Here I require that the Contacts must have DISPLAY_NAME free of "@" and that their informations match a given string (these requirement can of course be modified). The result of the following method is the first cursor :
public Cursor getContactCursor(String stringQuery, String sortOrder) {
Logger.i(TAG, "+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++");
Logger.e(TAG, "ContactCursor search has started...");
Long t0 = System.currentTimeMillis();
Uri CONTENT_URI;
if (stringQuery == null)
CONTENT_URI = ContactsContract.Contacts.CONTENT_URI;
else
CONTENT_URI = Uri.withAppendedPath(ContactsContract.Contacts.CONTENT_FILTER_URI, Uri.encode(stringQuery));
String[] PROJECTION = new String[]{
CONTACT_ID_URI,
NAME_URI,
PICTURE_URI
};
String SELECTION = NAME_URI + " NOT LIKE ?";
String[] SELECTION_ARGS = new String[]{"%" + "@" + "%"};
Cursor cursor = sContext.getContentResolver().query(CONTENT_URI, PROJECTION, SELECTION, SELECTION_ARGS, sortOrder);
Long t1 = System.currentTimeMillis();
Logger.e(TAG, "ContactCursor finished in " + (t1 - t0) / 1000 + " secs");
Logger.e(TAG, "ContactCursor found " + cursor.getCount() + " contacts");
Logger.i(TAG, "+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++");
return cursor;
}
This query is quite performant as you'll see !
2 Contact Details
Now let's fetch Contact informations. At this point, I dont make any link between the already fetched Contact and the retrieved information : I just fetch all informations form the Data table... Yet, to avoid useless info I still require DISPLAY_NAMES free of "@" and since I'm interested in email and phone I require that the data MIMETYPE to be either MAIL_TYPE or PHONE_TYPE (see Constants). Here is the code :
public Cursor getContactDetailsCursor() {
Logger.i(TAG, "+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++");
Logger.e(TAG, "ContactDetailsCursor search has started...");
Long t0 = System.currentTimeMillis();
String[] PROJECTION = new String[]{
DATA_CONTACT_ID_URI,
MIMETYPE_URI,
EMAIL_URI,
PHONE_URI
};
String SELECTION = ContactManager.NAME_URI + " NOT LIKE ?" + " AND " + "(" + MIMETYPE_URI + "=? " + " OR " + MIMETYPE_URI + "=? " + ")";
String[] SELECTION_ARGS = new String[]{"%" + "@" + "%", ContactsContract.CommonDataKinds.Email.CONTENT_ITEM_TYPE, ContactsContract.CommonDataKinds.Phone.CONTENT_ITEM_TYPE};
Cursor cursor = sContext.getContentResolver().query(
ContactsContract.Data.CONTENT_URI,
PROJECTION,
SELECTION,
SELECTION_ARGS,
null);
Long t1 = System.currentTimeMillis();
Logger.e(TAG, "ContactDetailsCursor finished in " + (t1 - t0) / 1000 + " secs");
Logger.e(TAG, "ContactDetailsCursor found " + cursor.getCount() + " contacts");
Logger.i(TAG, "+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++");
return cursor;
}
Once again you will see that this query is quite fast...
3 Combining
Now let's combine both Contact and their respective informations. The idea is to use HashMap(Key, String) where Key is the Contact id and String is whatever you like (name, email, ...).
First, I run through the Contact cursor (which is alphabetically ordered) and store names and picture uri in two different HashMap. Note also that I store all Contact id's in a List in the very same order that Contacts appear in the cursor. Lets call this list contactListId
I do the same for the Contact informations (mail and email). But now I take care of the correlation between the two cursor : if the CONTACT_ID of an email or phone does not appear in contactListId it is put aside. I check also if the email has already been encountered. Notice that this further selection can introduce asymmetries between the Name/Picture content and the Email/Phone HashMap content but don't worry.
Eventually, I run over the contactListId list and build a list of Contact object taking care of the fact that : a contact must have information (keySet condition) and that the contact must have at least a mail or an email (the case where mail == null && phone == null may appear if the contact is a Skype contact for instance).
And here is the code :
public List<Contact> getDetailedContactList(String queryString) {
/**
* First we fetch the contacts name and picture uri in alphabetical order for
* display purpose and store these data in HashMap.
*/
Cursor contactCursor = getContactCursor(queryString, NAME_URI);
List<Integer> contactIds = new ArrayList<>();
if (contactCursor.moveToFirst()) {
do {
contactIds.add(contactCursor.getInt(contactCursor.getColumnIndex(CONTACT_ID_URI)));
} while (contactCursor.moveToNext());
}
HashMap<Integer, String> nameMap = new HashMap<>();
HashMap<Integer, String> pictureMap = new HashMap<>();
int idIdx = contactCursor.getColumnIndex(CONTACT_ID_URI);
int nameIdx = contactCursor.getColumnIndex(NAME_URI);
int pictureIdx = contactCursor.getColumnIndex(PICTURE_URI);
if (contactCursor.moveToFirst()) {
do {
nameMap.put(contactCursor.getInt(idIdx), contactCursor.getString(nameIdx));
pictureMap.put(contactCursor.getInt(idIdx), contactCursor.getString(pictureIdx));
} while (contactCursor.moveToNext());
}
/**
* Then we get the remaining contact information. Here email and phone
*/
Cursor detailsCursor = getContactDetailsCursor();
HashMap<Integer, String> emailMap = new HashMap<>();
HashMap<Integer, String> phoneMap = new HashMap<>();
idIdx = detailsCursor.getColumnIndex(DATA_CONTACT_ID_URI);
int mimeIdx = detailsCursor.getColumnIndex(MIMETYPE_URI);
int mailIdx = detailsCursor.getColumnIndex(EMAIL_URI);
int phoneIdx = detailsCursor.getColumnIndex(PHONE_URI);
String mailString;
String phoneString;
if (detailsCursor.moveToFirst()) {
do {
/**
* We forget all details which are not correlated with the contact list
*/
if (!contactIds.contains(detailsCursor.getInt(idIdx))) {
continue;
}
if(detailsCursor.getString(mimeIdx).equals(MAIL_TYPE)){
mailString = detailsCursor.getString(mailIdx);
/**
* We remove all double contact having the same email address
*/
if(!emailMap.containsValue(mailString.toLowerCase()))
emailMap.put(detailsCursor.getInt(idIdx), mailString.toLowerCase());
} else {
phoneString = detailsCursor.getString(phoneIdx);
phoneMap.put(detailsCursor.getInt(idIdx), phoneString);
}
} while (detailsCursor.moveToNext());
}
contactCursor.close();
detailsCursor.close();
/**
* Finally the contact list is build up
*/
List<Contact> contacts = new ArrayList<>();
Set<Integer> detailsKeySet = emailMap.keySet();
for (Integer key : contactIds) {
if(!detailsKeySet.contains(key) || (emailMap.get(key) == null && phoneMap.get(key) == null))
continue;
contacts.add(new Contact(String.valueOf(key), pictureMap.get(key), nameMap.get(key), emailMap.get(key), phoneMap.get(key)));
}
return contacts;
}
The Contact object definition is up to you.
Hope this will help and thanks for the previous post.
Correction/Improvement
I forgot to check the phone key set : it should rather looks like
!mailKeySet.contains(key)
replaced by
(!mailKeySet.contains(key) && !phoneKeySet.contains(key))
with the phone keySet
Set<Integer> phoneKeySet = phoneMap.keySet();
I why not add an empty contact cursor check like :
if(contactCursor.getCount() == 0){
contactCursor.close();
return new ArrayList<>();
}
right after the getContactCursor call