Clearing data on account removal

Question

I want to clear the application's data when a user manually removes an account from the Accounts & sync section in the settings app.

I have my own implementation of AbstractAccountAuthenticator but there is no method to hook in the remove account process. Any hints?

Answer 1

I've been pondering on the same problem and here's the "solution" I decided upon. It's not what I'd call the "correct" solution but it's the best I believe you can manage with the current API.

In my implementation of the AbstractAccountAuthenticator class, I've overriden the getAccountRemovalAllowed function as follows:

@Override
public Bundle getAccountRemovalAllowed(
        AccountAuthenticatorResponse response, Account account)
        throws NetworkErrorException {
    Bundle result = super.getAccountRemovalAllowed(response, account);

    if (result != null && result.containsKey(AccountManager.KEY_BOOLEAN_RESULT)
            && !result.containsKey(AccountManager.KEY_INTENT)) {
        final boolean removalAllowed = result.getBoolean(AccountManager.KEY_BOOLEAN_RESULT);

        if (removalAllowed) {
            // Do my removal stuff here
        }
    }

    return result;
}

There is a tiny chance that removal could fail AFTER you return from getAccountRemovalAllowed but it's negligible (IMHO).

As MisterSquonk suggested there is an Intent that you could listen for (ACCOUNTS_CHANGED_INTENT) but, unfortunately, it's broadcast when an account changes, and not just when an account is deleted.

I don't understand why this isn't part of the SDK but maybe we've both missed something obvious! For now, I'm sticking with this approach as I need to delete some database tables of my own on account deletion.

I hope this helps.