Android custom method in content provider to get number of records in table?

Question

I have a content provider that accesses my database which is fine if you need to deal with record sets but I need a method to return an integer denoting the number of records in a table

The method looks like this

public long getRecordCount(String TableName) {
    SQLiteDatabase mDatabase = mOpenHelper.getReadableDatabase();
    String sql = "SELECT COUNT(*) FROM " + TableName;
    SQLiteStatement statement = mDatabase.compileStatement(sql);
    long count = statement.simpleQueryForLong();
    return count;
}

But I am unable to find any way of using this (Or any other method that does not return a cursor for that matter) in a content provider so where is the best place to put this method and how to call it?

Obviously I could do the really bad option of selecting all the records with a managed query and using the cursor.count result but that is one hugely inefficient way of dealing with this specific requirement

Thanks

Answer 1

You can also simply use "count(*)" as a projection in a call to your content providers URIs, as in the following helper method

public static int count(Uri uri,String selection,String[] selectionArgs) {
  Cursor cursor = getContentResolver().query(uri,new String[] {"count(*)"},
      selection, selectionArgs, null);
  if (cursor.getCount() == 0) {
    cursor.close();
    return 0;
  } else {
    cursor.moveToFirst();
    int result = cursor.getInt(0);
    cursor.close();
    return result;
  }
}

Answer 2

One way you can access it is by using the call() method in the ContentResolver class. I can't seem to find much about how to actually use this on google, but my guess is that you should just have your getRecordCount() return a bundle with your result in it. Of course the easier thing to do would be something like what's described in this SO Post.