Question

In Android, when the user selects one contact using the contact picker, you get only the CONTACT_ID field. But for updating some contact info, you need to edit the raw contact data. To do so, you have to know the RAW_CONTACT_ID. Is this correct so far?

So how do you get the RAW_CONTACT_ID that you need for updating data when you have only the CONTACT_ID? Like this … ?

String[] projection = new String[] { ContactsContract.RawContacts._ID };
String where = ContactsContract.RawContacts.CONTACT_ID + " = ?";
String[] selection = new String[] { String.valueOf(contactId) };
Cursor c = getContentResolver().query(ContactsContract.RawContacts.CONTENT_URI, projection, where, selection, null);

But this way you will get all the RAW_CONTACT_IDs belonging to the picked user, right? Which one is then the raw contact that I should update?

If you want to say “It’s up to you”: It’s all the same to me. I just want to put my data anywhere, in any raw contact that can hold the data.

Answer 1

There’s no perfect answer. But the easiest, and probably, most correct is to use the google account.

Which you can do by selecting on the ACCOUNT_TYPE which will be “com.google” for the google account. As there can be many google accounts on the phone just choose the first one (or the one with most contacts).