Changing contact's image to a large photo via PHOTO_FILE_ID in Android

Question

This seems to work for small images:

ContentValues values = new ContentValues();

values.put(ContactsContract.Data.RAW_CONTACT_ID, id);
values.put(ContactsContract.Data.IS_SUPER_PRIMARY, 1);
values.put(ContactsContract.CommonDataKinds.Photo.PHOTO, photo);
values.put(ContactsContract.Data.MIMETYPE, ContactsContract.CommonDataKinds.Photo.CONTENT_ITEM_TYPE);
if (photoRow >= 0) {
    context.getContentResolver().update(ContactsContract.Data.CONTENT_URI, values, ContactsContract.Data._ID + " = " + photoRow, null);
} else {
    context.getContentResolver().insert(ContactsContract.Data.CONTENT_URI, values);
}

From the docs I realise that for large images I need to set the PHOTO_FILE_ID, so I can replace:

ContactsContract.CommonDataKinds.Photo.PHOTO

with:

ContactsContract.CommonDataKinds.Photo.PHOTO_FILE_ID

However, then I need to supply a PHOTO_FILE_ID rather than raw data. My question:

1. How do I save the photo (byte []) and get a PHOTO_FILE_ID?
2. If there is already a photo available (PHOTO not PHOTO_FILE_ID). Do I need to delete it for the big image to be seen or does the big image take precedence, if not, how do I delete it?

Answer 1

Your own answer will work, but it's not very efficient because the photo needs to be encoded into an SQL query and piped through Android IPC. That also makes it a subject to Android's IPC size limit of 1MB (i.e. if your photo is too large the content provider operation will fail).

The most efficient way to set (create or override) a RawContact's (primary) photo is by using openAssetFileDescriptor and a ContactsContract.RawContacts.DisplayPhoto URI like so (example copied from Android docs):

public void writeDisplayPhoto(long rawContactId, byte[] photo) {
    Uri rawContactPhotoUri = Uri.withAppendedPath(
            ContentUris.withAppendedId(RawContacts.CONTENT_URI, rawContactId),
            RawContacts.DisplayPhoto.CONTENT_DIRECTORY);
    try {
        AssetFileDescriptor fd =
            getContentResolver().openAssetFileDescriptor(rawContactPhotoUri, "rw");
        OutputStream os = fd.createOutputStream();
        os.write(photo);
        os.close();
        fd.close();
    } catch (IOException e) {
        // Handle error cases.
    }
}

The only drawback of this approach is that it always creates/replaces the primary photo of the RawContact. If the RawContact doesn't have a photo yet this will add one.

Unfortunately there is no way to use openAssetFileDescriptor with a PHOTO_FILE_ID, so you can't override a specific photo identified by its ID using this method. However, in real life most contacts probably have at most one photo, so that's not a real limitation.

This will automatically update the Photo.PHOTO column with a thumbnail of the large photo and assign a PHOTO_FILE_ID.