User Profile

Android has supported enumerating contacts with the ContactsContract provider since API Level 5. For example, listing contacts is as simple as using the ContactContracts.Contacts class as shown in the following code example:

// Get the URI for the user's contacts:
var uri = ContactsContract.Contacts.ContentUri;

// Setup the "projection" (columns we want) for only the ID and display name:
string[] projection = {
    ContactsContract.Contacts.InterfaceConsts.Id,
    ContactsContract.Contacts.InterfaceConsts.DisplayName };

// Use a CursorLoader to retrieve the user's contacts data:
CursorLoader loader = new CursorLoader(this, uri, projection, null, null, null);
ICursor cursor = (ICursor)loader.LoadInBackground();

// Print the contact data to the console if reading back succeeds:
if (cursor != null)
{
    if (cursor.MoveToFirst())
    {
        do
        {
            Console.WriteLine("Contact ID: {0}, Contact Name: {1}",
                               cursor.GetString(cursor.GetColumnIndex(projection[0])),
                               cursor.GetString(cursor.GetColumnIndex(projection[1])));
        } while (cursor.MoveToNext());
    }
}

Beginning with Android 4 (API Level 14), the ContactsContact.Profile class is available through the ContactsContract provider. The ContactsContact.Profile provides access to the personal profile for the owner of a device, which includes contact data such as the device owner's name and phone number.

Required Permissions

To read and write contact data, applications must request the READ_CONTACTS and WRITE_CONTACTS permissions, respectively. Additionally, to read and edit the user profile, applications must request the READ_PROFILE and WRITE_PROFILE permissions.

Updating Profile Data

Once these permissions have been set, an application can use normal Android techniques to interact with the user profile's data. For example, to update the profile's display name, call ContentResolver.Update with a Uri retrieved through the ContactsContract.Profile.ContentRawContactsUri property, as shown below:

var values = new ContentValues ();
values.Put (ContactsContract.Contacts.InterfaceConsts.DisplayName, "John Doe");

// Update the user profile with the name "John Doe":
ContentResolver.Update (ContactsContract.Profile.ContentRawContactsUri, values, null, null);

Reading Profile Data

Issuing a query to the ContactsContact.Profile.ContentUri reads back the profile data. For example, the following code will read the user profile's display name:

// Read the profile
var uri = ContactsContract.Profile.ContentUri;

// Setup the "projection" (column we want) for only the display name:
string[] projection = {
    ContactsContract.Contacts.InterfaceConsts.DisplayName };

// Use a CursorLoader to retrieve the data:
CursorLoader loader = new CursorLoader(this, uri, projection, null, null, null);
ICursor cursor = (ICursor)loader.LoadInBackground();
if (cursor != null)
{
    if (cursor.MoveToFirst ())
    {
        Console.WriteLine(cursor.GetString (cursor.GetColumnIndex (projection [0])));
    }
}

Navigating to the User Profile

Finally, to navigate to the user profile, create an Intent with an ActionView action and a ContactsContract.Profile.ContentUri then pass it to the StartActivity method like this:

var intent = new Intent (Intent.ActionView,
    ContactsContract.Profile.ContentUri);
StartActivity (intent);

When running the above code, the user profile is displayed as illustrated in the following screenshot:

Working with the user profile is similar to interacting with other data in Android, and it offers an additional level of device personalization.