Question

I’d like to use the android AccountManager to sync my webservice and application (standard sync of contacts and calander) however, AccountManager only appears to store a username and password. My web service takes three credentials: a username, a password and an account. What is the best practice for storing the third piece of information?

Answer 1

As pablisco explained, you can use AccountManager’s ability to store arbitrary user data through addAccountExplicitly()‘s userData Bundle parameter:

    final Bundle extraData = new Bundle();
    extraData.putString("someKey", "stringData");
    boolean accountCreated = am.addAccountExplicitly(account, password, extraData);

Later on, for example in your Authenticator’s getAuthToken() method, you can retrieve the data related to the account you are working with:

    String myData = am.getUserData(account, "someKey");

Unfortunately as of this writing you can only retrieve Strings, so your data should be stored as a String when you first build the Bundle. Hope this helps someone.