How do I delete RawContacts that have a specific Organization.company data? #157

amoshalava · 2021-12-31T21:48:48Z

amoshalava
Dec 31, 2021

Awesome code by the way!!!

Is there a way to delete a group based on the company name?

I'm writing an app that pulls company contacts from an API and want to delete all that has a #CompanyName and then replace with the new information from the API. I have it creating just fine but getting to delete is somehow not working for me.

Answered by vestrel00

Dec 31, 2021

To answer your question effectively, it would be useful for you to read the "Contacts Provider / ContactsContract Basic Concept" section in this how-to/guide; https://github.com/vestrel00/contacts-android/blob/main/howto/howto-learn-more-about-api-entities.md

The rest of this answer assumes that you have a basic understanding of the one to many relationship between Contacts -> RawContacts -> Data.

I'll breakdown this answer using my favorite problem and solution style. Please let me know if I formulated the problem incorrectly. The answer will be incorrect if the problem is not accurate 😄

Problem

Given the following tables,

## Contacts
Contact_Id: 1, DisplayName: "Apple"
Contact_Id: 2, Di…

View full answer

vestrel00 · 2021-12-31T21:55:25Z

vestrel00
Dec 31, 2021
Maintainer

Thanks for the compliment 😁

Before I answer your question, I need to clarify something.

Are you trying to delete a set of GroupEntity OR a set of ContactEntity with a company name that matches what you want?

5 replies

amoshalava Dec 31, 2021
Author

i'm not sure. i'm trying to figure out the way to do it. I have created a bunch of Contacts with the company set to #CompanyName. I just need to delete all of them before I add the list again. Is their a best practices way? should I group them someway first?

amoshalava Dec 31, 2021
Author

My intent is when someone leaves the company the contact is removed and the company phone number goes to a new person it would show up with the new person's name.

vestrel00 Dec 31, 2021
Maintainer

Ahh, I see! So what you want to do is first get the list of Contacts that have Organization.company matching the company name. Then, delete all of those contacts. Then, create new contacts from your API data.

If I understood that correctly, then this library can do exactly that 😁

I'll be able to give you the exact answer in code within the hour once I get to my laptop. Im currently on my phone lol

amoshalava Dec 31, 2021
Author

awesome thank you!!!

vestrel00 Dec 31, 2021
Maintainer

I updated the discussion title to reflect the question.

vestrel00 · 2021-12-31T23:37:36Z

vestrel00
Dec 31, 2021
Maintainer

To answer your question effectively, it would be useful for you to read the "Contacts Provider / ContactsContract Basic Concept" section in this how-to/guide; https://github.com/vestrel00/contacts-android/blob/main/howto/howto-learn-more-about-api-entities.md

The rest of this answer assumes that you have a basic understanding of the one to many relationship between Contacts -> RawContacts -> Data.

I'll breakdown this answer using my favorite problem and solution style. Please let me know if I formulated the problem incorrectly. The answer will be incorrect if the problem is not accurate 😄

Problem

Given the following tables,

## Contacts
Contact_Id: 1, DisplayName: "Apple"
Contact_Id: 2, DisplayName: "Banana"
Contact_Id: 3, DisplayName: "Carrot"
Contact_Id: 4, DisplayName: "Durian"

## RawContacts
RawContact_Id: 1, Contact_Id: 1, DisplayName: "Apple"
RawContact_Id: 2, Contact_Id: 2, DisplayName: "Banana"
RawContact_Id: 3, Contact_Id: 3, DisplayName: "Carrot"
RawContact_Id: 4, Contact_Id: 3, DisplayName: "Calabash"
RawContact_Id: 5, Contact_Id: 4, DisplayName: "Durian"
RawContact_Id: 6, Contact_Id: 4, DisplayName: "Dragonfruit"

## Data
Data_Id: 1, RawContact_Id: 1, Organization.Company: "A Fruits"
Data_Id: 2, RawContact_Id: 2, Organization.Company: "B Fruits"
Data_Id: 3, RawContact_Id: 3, Organization.Company: "C Fruits"
Data_Id: 4, RawContact_Id: 4, Organization.Company: "C Fruits"
Data_Id: 5, RawContact_Id: 5, Organization.Company: "D Fruits"
Data_Id: 6, RawContact_Id: 6, Organization.Company: "Dragons"

Write functions to...

Delete all Contacts that have at least one RawContact that has Organization.Company equal to (case insensitive) companyName.
Delete all RawContactss that have Organization.Company equal to (case insensitive) companyName.

These functions differ in behavior as will be discussed in the solution.

Solution

(1) Delete all `Contact`s that have at least one `RawContact` that has `Organization.Company` equal to (case insensitive) `companyName`.

fun deleteAllContactsWithARawContactThatHasCompanyNameEqualTo(context: Context, companyName: String) {
    val contactsApi = Contacts(context)
    
    // First get the Contacts to delete.
    val contactsToDelete = contactsApi
        .query()
        .include(Fields.Contact.Id)
        .where { 
            Organization.Company equalToIgnoreCase companyName
        }
        .find()

    // Then delete the Contacts.
    contactsApi
        .delete()
        .contacts(contactsToDelete)
        .commit()
}

If companyName is "a fruits", then...
- Contacts with Id will be deleted; 1
- also RawContacts with Id will be deleted; 1
If companyName is "b fruits", then...
- Contacts with Id will be deleted; 2
- also RawContacts with Id will be deleted; 2
If companyName is "c fruits", then...
- Contacts with Id will be deleted; 3
- also RawContacts with Id will be deleted; 3, 4
If companyName is "d fruits", then...
- Contacts with Id will be deleted; 4
- also RawContacts with Id will be deleted; 5, 6
- Notice that RawContact with Id 6 still gets deleted even though its company name "Dragons" does not match "d fruits"!

(2) Delete all `RawContacts`s that have `Organization.Company` equal to (case insensitive) `companyName`.

fun deleteAllRawContactsThatHasCompanyNameEqualTo(context: Context, companyName: String) {
    val contactsApi = Contacts(context)

    val rawContactsToDelete = contactsApi
        .query()
        .include(Fields.Organization.Company)
        .where { Organization.Company equalToIgnoreCase companyName }
        .find()
        .flatMap { it.rawContacts }
        .filter {
            it.organization?.company?.equals(companyName, ignoreCase = true) == true
        }

    contactsApi
        .delete()
        .rawContacts(rawContactsToDelete)
        .commit()
}

If companyName is "a fruits", then...
- Contacts with Id will be deleted; 1
- also RawContacts with Id will be deleted; 1
If companyName is "b fruits", then...
- Contacts with Id will be deleted; 2
- also RawContacts with Id will be deleted; 2
If companyName is "c fruits", then...
- Contacts with Id will be deleted; 3
- also RawContacts with Id will be deleted; 3, 4
If companyName is "d fruits", then...
- No Contacts will be deleted
- Only RawContacts with Id 5 will be deleted.
- Notice that RawContact with Id 6 DOES NOT get deleted because its company name "Dragons" does not match "d fruits"!
- Contact with Id 4 DOES NOT get deleted because it still has one RawContact remaining".
- Contact_Id: 4, DisplayName: "Durian" transforms to Contact_Id: 4, DisplayName: "Dragonfruit" because the RawContact "Durian" was deleted but the RawContact "Dragonfruit" remains.

Contacts vs RawContacts

Depending on the behavior that you want, you either want to delete Contacts (and all of its constituent RawContacts) OR just the RawContacts. Keep in mind that a Contact will NOT be deleted as long as it still has at least one RawContact remaining.

To help you see what I'm talking about, here is a recording of linking and unlinking Contacts (and their constituent RawContacts) using the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) Contacts.

linking-unlinking.mov

In the above video, you see that there are two Contacts each having one RawContact. Linking them results in a single Contact with two constituent RawContacts.

Final thoughts

This library simply provides you a set of tools that greatly simplifies interfacing with the Contacts Provider. However, it does not define its own rules. It respects and follows the rules set forth by the Contacts Provider. This means that users of this library must understand the difference and relationship between Contacts and RawContacts.

This is the reason why this library provides so much documentation in code and in the howto pages. Any library that attempts to wrap the Contacts Provider MUST provide extensive documentation. Otherwise, users of the library will make mistakes. There is no way around this.

What ever you can do with the AOSP Contacts app, which comes with almost every copy of Android, this library will allow you to do.

3 replies

vestrel00 Dec 31, 2021
Maintainer

On a side note, I just created the following issue to make it possible to delete Contacts and RawContacts using a WHERE clause in a single query without having to fetch them first.

Delete Contacts and RawContacts using a WHERE clause #158

The new functionality will be a part of the v0.1.11 Release.

amoshalava Jan 1, 2022
Author

This is great stuff! Keep it up. Thank you

vestrel00 Jan 1, 2022
Maintainer

Thanks. If this answered your question, please mark it as the answer.

Happy new year! 😁

amoshalava · 2022-01-02T07:37:43Z

amoshalava
Jan 2, 2022
Author

i keep getting this error when i paste that code into android studio.

16 replies

amoshalava Jan 8, 2022
Author

So the app design is to pull Company phone numbers from an API, create contacts on just the device so they don't sync across to any accounts on the phone, then when someone phone changes or someone leaves company and a new person gets their number it will delete all the contacts that I previously added and then add all new ones to that the names update to new numbers.

vestrel00 Jan 8, 2022
Maintainer

create contacts on just the device so they don't sync across to any accounts on the phone

You can do this. However, there are some caveats you need to know. Everything should be documented in the function documentation of Insert.forAccount.

vestrel00 Jan 8, 2022
Maintainer

i call the code like this:

The code you have seems fine. Please do this for me,

Upgrade to 0.1.10 (I think you already did but just making sure).
In all of your code, instead of Contacts(context), do Contacts(context, logger = AndroidLogger(redactMessages = false))
Download the Google Contacts app
Create some fake contacts with company name "#CCSO AgencySync" using the Google Contacts app.
Then, run your app with the function deleteAllContactsWithARawContactThatHasCompanyNameEqualTo(this, "#CCSO AgencySync")
Filter your Logcat with the tag "ContactsDebug".
Copy-paste the logs in this discussion so I can see it.
- Please make sure to not copy-paste private information! Only copy-paste logs from the fake contacts you created!

amoshalava Jan 8, 2022
Author

OH MAN IT WORKS!!! I'm so sorry i had to reset permissions. I'll write code to prompt for permission so i don't miss that again. this is huge. let me know how I can help promote this!

vestrel00 Jan 8, 2022
Maintainer

I'm so glad it works for you!!! I'm just happy that I was able to help. There is no need for you to promote this but if you really want to, then feel free to let people know about this library =)

One thing you can do is ⭐️ star the repo if you haven't already. If you want to get updates, also 👁 watch the repo.

Cheers 🍻

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How do I delete RawContacts that have a specific Organization.company data? #157

amoshalava Dec 31, 2021

Problem

Replies: 3 comments · 24 replies

vestrel00 Dec 31, 2021 Maintainer

amoshalava Dec 31, 2021 Author

amoshalava Dec 31, 2021 Author

vestrel00 Dec 31, 2021 Maintainer

amoshalava Dec 31, 2021 Author

vestrel00 Dec 31, 2021 Maintainer

vestrel00 Dec 31, 2021 Maintainer

Problem

Solution

(1) Delete all Contacts that have at least one RawContact that has Organization.Company equal to (case insensitive) companyName.

(2) Delete all RawContactss that have Organization.Company equal to (case insensitive) companyName.

Contacts vs RawContacts

Final thoughts

vestrel00 Dec 31, 2021 Maintainer

amoshalava Jan 1, 2022 Author

vestrel00 Jan 1, 2022 Maintainer

amoshalava Jan 2, 2022 Author

amoshalava Jan 8, 2022 Author

vestrel00 Jan 8, 2022 Maintainer

vestrel00 Jan 8, 2022 Maintainer

amoshalava Jan 8, 2022 Author

vestrel00 Jan 8, 2022 Maintainer

amoshalava
Dec 31, 2021

Replies: 3 comments 24 replies

vestrel00
Dec 31, 2021
Maintainer

amoshalava Dec 31, 2021
Author

amoshalava Dec 31, 2021
Author

vestrel00 Dec 31, 2021
Maintainer

amoshalava Dec 31, 2021
Author

vestrel00 Dec 31, 2021
Maintainer

vestrel00
Dec 31, 2021
Maintainer

(1) Delete all `Contact`s that have at least one `RawContact` that has `Organization.Company` equal to (case insensitive) `companyName`.

(2) Delete all `RawContacts`s that have `Organization.Company` equal to (case insensitive) `companyName`.

vestrel00 Dec 31, 2021
Maintainer

amoshalava Jan 1, 2022
Author

vestrel00 Jan 1, 2022
Maintainer

amoshalava
Jan 2, 2022
Author

amoshalava Jan 8, 2022
Author

vestrel00 Jan 8, 2022
Maintainer

vestrel00 Jan 8, 2022
Maintainer

amoshalava Jan 8, 2022
Author

vestrel00 Jan 8, 2022
Maintainer