How do I load a contact Photo?

Question

I'm having trouble loading a photo for a contact in Android. I've googled for an answer, but so far have come up empty. Does anyone have an example of querying for a Contact, then loading the Photo?

So, given a contactUri which comes from an Activity result called using

startActivityForResult(new Intent(Intent.ACTION_PICK,ContactsContract.CommonDataKinds.Phone.CONTENT_URI),PICK_CONTACT_REQUEST) 

is:

content://com.android.contacts/data/1557

The loadContact(..) works fine. However when I call the getPhoto(...) method, I get a null value for the photo InputStream. It is also confusing because the URI values are different. The contactPhotoUri evaluates to:

content://com.android.contacts/contacts/1557

See the comments inline in the code below.

 class ContactAccessor {

    /**
     * Retrieves the contact information.
     */
    public ContactInfo loadContact(ContentResolver contentResolver, Uri contactUri) {

        //contactUri --> content://com.android.contacts/data/1557

        ContactInfo contactInfo = new ContactInfo();

        // Load the display name for the specified person
        Cursor cursor = contentResolver.query(contactUri,
                                            new String[]{Contacts._ID, 
                                                         Contacts.DISPLAY_NAME, 
                                                         Phone.NUMBER,
                                                         Contacts.PHOTO_ID}, null, null, null);
        try {
            if (cursor.moveToFirst()) {
                contactInfo.setId(cursor.getLong(0));
                contactInfo.setDisplayName(cursor.getString(1));
                contactInfo.setPhoneNumber(cursor.getString(2));
            }
        } finally {
            cursor.close();
        }        
        return contactInfo;  // <-- returns info for contact
    }

    public Bitmap getPhoto(ContentResolver contentResolver, Long contactId) {
        Uri contactPhotoUri = ContentUris.withAppendedId(Contacts.CONTENT_URI, contactId);

        // contactPhotoUri --> content://com.android.contacts/contacts/1557

        InputStream photoDataStream = Contacts.openContactPhotoInputStream(contentResolver,contactPhotoUri); // <-- always null
        Bitmap photo = BitmapFactory.decodeStream(photoDataStream);
        return photo;
    }

    public class ContactInfo {

        private long id;
        private String displayName;
        private String phoneNumber;
        private Uri photoUri;

        public void setDisplayName(String displayName) {
            this.displayName = displayName;
        }

        public String getDisplayName() {
            return displayName;
        }

        public void setPhoneNumber(String phoneNumber) {
            this.phoneNumber = phoneNumber;
        }

        public String getPhoneNumber() {
            return phoneNumber;
        }

        public Uri getPhotoUri() {
            return this.photoUri;
        }

        public void setPhotoUri(Uri photoUri) {
            this.photoUri = photoUri;
        }

        public long getId() {
            return this.id;
        }

        public void setId(long id) {
            this.id = id;
        }

    }
}

Clearly, I'm doing something wrong here, but I can't seem to figure out what the problem is. Thanks.

Answer 1

This works for me:

public static Bitmap loadContactPhoto(ContentResolver cr, long  id) {
    Uri uri = ContentUris.withAppendedId(ContactsContract.Contacts.CONTENT_URI, id);
    InputStream input = ContactsContract.Contacts.openContactPhotoInputStream(cr, uri);
    if (input == null) {
        return null;
    }
    return BitmapFactory.decodeStream(input);
}

Answer 2

Having scanned the many questions and answers to the problem of displaying a thumbnail I thought I would post my solution to this particular conundrum as I could only find a couple that worked at all and none that provided a good canned solution for the lazy developer.

The class below takes a Context, QuickContactBadge and a telephone number and will attach a locally stored image to the badge if there is one available for the specified phone number.

Here's the class:

public final class QuickContactHelper {

private static final String[] PHOTO_ID_PROJECTION = new String[] {
    ContactsContract.Contacts.PHOTO_ID
};

private static final String[] PHOTO_BITMAP_PROJECTION = new String[] {
    ContactsContract.CommonDataKinds.Photo.PHOTO
};

private final QuickContactBadge badge;

private final String phoneNumber;

private final ContentResolver contentResolver;

public QuickContactHelper(final Context context, final QuickContactBadge badge, final String phoneNumber) {

    this.badge = badge;
    this.phoneNumber = phoneNumber;
    contentResolver = context.getContentResolver();

}

public void addThumbnail() {

    final Integer thumbnailId = fetchThumbnailId();
    if (thumbnailId != null) {
        final Bitmap thumbnail = fetchThumbnail(thumbnailId);
        if (thumbnail != null) {
            badge.setImageBitmap(thumbnail);
        }
    }

}

private Integer fetchThumbnailId() {

    final Uri uri = Uri.withAppendedPath(ContactsContract.CommonDataKinds.Phone.CONTENT_FILTER_URI, Uri.encode(phoneNumber));
    final Cursor cursor = contentResolver.query(uri, PHOTO_ID_PROJECTION, null, null, ContactsContract.Contacts.DISPLAY_NAME + " ASC");

    try {
        Integer thumbnailId = null;
        if (cursor.moveToFirst()) {
            thumbnailId = cursor.getInt(cursor.getColumnIndex(ContactsContract.Contacts.PHOTO_ID));
        }
        return thumbnailId;
    }
    finally {
        cursor.close();
    }

}

final Bitmap fetchThumbnail(final int thumbnailId) {

    final Uri uri = ContentUris.withAppendedId(ContactsContract.Data.CONTENT_URI, thumbnailId);
    final Cursor cursor = contentResolver.query(uri, PHOTO_BITMAP_PROJECTION, null, null, null);

    try {
        Bitmap thumbnail = null;
        if (cursor.moveToFirst()) {
            final byte[] thumbnailBytes = cursor.getBlob(0);
            if (thumbnailBytes != null) {
                thumbnail = BitmapFactory.decodeByteArray(thumbnailBytes, 0, thumbnailBytes.length);
            }
        }
        return thumbnail;
    }
    finally {
        cursor.close();
    }

}

}

And here's a typical use case inside an activity:

String phoneNumber = "...";
QuickContactBadge badge = (QuickContactBadge) view.findViewById(R.id.friend);
new QuickContactHelper(this, badge, phoneNumber).addThumbnail();

In a fragment it will be slightly different:

String phoneNumber = "...";
QuickContactBadge badge = (QuickContactBadge) view.findViewById(R.id.friend);
new QuickContactHelper(getActivity(), badge, phoneNumber).addThumbnail();

Now there are ways to be more efficient - for example if you are rendering a message timeline you'd want to re-use the same bitmap object for every badge instance for a given phone number instead of constantly creating new helper class instances and re-retrieving the bitmap - but my purpose here was to post a solution that is stripped down to the absolute minimum for clarity whilst at the same time providing a complete and usable solution out of the box. This solution has been built and tested on Andriod 4.0, and tested on 4.1 as well.

Answer 3

After a lot of debugging nights I discover that the best approach is to use the contact id and if it fails to use the photo id.

public static Bitmap loadContactPhoto(ContentResolver cr, long  id,long photo_id) 
{

    Uri uri = ContentUris.withAppendedId(ContactsContract.Contacts.CONTENT_URI, id);
    InputStream input = ContactsContract.Contacts.openContactPhotoInputStream(cr, uri);
    if (input != null) 
    {
        return BitmapFactory.decodeStream(input);
    }
    else
    {
        Log.d("PHOTO","first try failed to load photo");

    }

    byte[] photoBytes = null;

    Uri photoUri = ContentUris.withAppendedId(ContactsContract.Data.CONTENT_URI, photo_id);

    Cursor c = cr.query(photoUri, new String[] {ContactsContract.CommonDataKinds.Photo.PHOTO}, null, null, null);

    try 
    {
        if (c.moveToFirst()) 
            photoBytes = c.getBlob(0);

    } catch (Exception e) {
        // TODO: handle exception
        e.printStackTrace();

    } finally {

        c.close();
    }           

    if (photoBytes != null)
        return BitmapFactory.decodeByteArray(photoBytes,0,photoBytes.length);
    else
        Log.d("PHOTO","second try also failed");
    return null;
}

the code tested on emulator and Nexus S device and seems to work.