Create autocompletetextview to display contacts

Question

I want to create a auto complete textview in application that will read and show the users phone contacts. First i tried the link given here but the problem was everything was happening in the UI thread, hence my UI thread would freeze for like 10 seconds.

I saw many examples but all happen in the UI thread.

Then after googling a lot i came to the concept of cursoradapter and found a very good project given here but the problem is this example uses Contacts.CONTENT_URI and i cant get the Phone number associated with each contact. I tried changing the uri to ContactsContract.CommonDataKinds.Phone but it didn't work.

Then i modified the getitem method as follows:

@Override
public Object getItem(int position) {
    Cursor cursor = (Cursor) super.getItem(position);
    Contact contact = new Contact();

    String imageUri = cursor
            .getString(ContactsQuery.PHOTO_THUMBNAIL_DATA_COLUMN);
    Bitmap bitmap = loadContactPhotoThumbnail(imageUri,
            mDropdownItemHeight);
    if (bitmap == null) {
        bitmap = mLoadingImage;
    }

    contact.id = cursor.getLong(ContactsQuery.ID_COLUMN);

    Cursor phones = mContext.getContentResolver().query(
            ContactsContract.CommonDataKinds.Phone.CONTENT_URI,
            null,
            ContactsContract.CommonDataKinds.Phone.CONTACT_ID + " = "
                    + contact.id, null, null);
    while (phones.moveToNext()) {
        String phoneNumber = phones
                .getString(phones
                        .getColumnIndex(ContactsContract.CommonDataKinds.Phone.NUMBER));
        Log.d(TAG, "Number: " + phoneNumber);
    }

    contact.lookupKey = cursor
            .getString(ContactsQuery.LOOKUP_KEY_COLUMN);
    contact.displayName = cursor
            .getString(ContactsQuery.DISPLAY_NAME_COLUMN);
    contact.image = bitmap;

    return contact;
} 

This gives me the contact number, but the query still happens in the UI thread i guess. I want it to happen in background thread. How do i achieve this.

Please also tell if there is an alternate approach.

Answer 1

You can write AsyncTask and retrieve the records in the doInBackgroud and then set the adapter to the autocomplete textview in the onPostExecute method. Something like this can be done :

private void loadContacts(){
    AsyncTask<Void, Void, Void> contactsTask = new AsyncTask<Void, Void, Void>(){

        ProgressDialog progressDialog = null;

        @Override
        protected void onPreExecute() {
            final String msg = "Loading Contacts...";
            progressDialog = ProgressDialog.show(mContext, "Contacts", msg);
        }

        @Override
        protected Void doInBackground(Void... params) {

            final String projection[] = { Contacts.DISPLAY_NAME, Phone.NUMBER, "_id" };
            final String selection = null;
            final String[] selectionArgs = null;

            Cursor contactsCursor = mContext.getContentResolver().query(Phone.CONTENT_URI,
                    projection, selection, selectionArgs, null);

            final int[] toResources = {R.id.textView1, R.id.textView2};

            mContactsAdapter = new SimpleCursorAdapter(mContext,
                    R.layout.contacts_row, contactsCursor,
                    projection, toResources,0);

            return null;
        }

        @Override
        protected void onPostExecute(Void result) {
            progressDialog.dismiss();
            autoCompleteTextView.setAdapter(mContactsAdapter);
        }
    };

    contactsTask.execute(null,null);
}