Check if the event exists before adding it to the Android calender

Question

I have a list of events in my app. A button on the side lets the user add the event date and time to his/her calender. I use a calender intent to redirect the user to the android calender which the corresponding date and time. Now after the user adds the event to his calender, I would like to disable the 'add event' button which corresponds to the events he/she had already added(so the user avoid adding the same event again). How can I do this? I have gone through the new calender API for android 4.0 but I wasnt able to achieve what I wanted.

Basically what I want is to avoid repeated entries for the same event in the users calender.

Any help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

You should test, if an instance for this event exists. See the documentation of the Android's CalendarContract.Instances class.

Especially the second query method should be helpful in this case.

This examples is some code, I posted on my blog post about the CalendarContract provider - slightly altered for your needs:

long begin = // starting time in milliseconds
long end = // ending time in milliseconds
String[] proj = 
      new String[]{
            Instances._ID, 
            Instances.BEGIN, 
            Instances.END, 
            Instances.EVENT_ID};
Cursor cursor = 
      Instances.query(getContentResolver(), proj, begin, end, "\"Your event title\"");
if (cursor.getCount() > 0) {
   // deal with conflict
}

Be aware: The time is always in UTC millis since the epoch. So you might have to adjust given the user's timezone.

And the last parameter should contain the title of the event you have added to the calendar. Keep the quotes - otherwise Android looks for "your" or "event" or "title"!

And do not forget to include the necessary permissions.