Listen outgoing SMS or sent box in Android

Question

I am developing an application which will store all the incoming and outgoing sms in a text file in SD card.

I am able to listen incoming messages using broadcast receiver. I am finding it very difficult to listen to outgoing SMS.

I know to some extent that a content observer on the sent box or outbox needs to be set, but I don't know how to do it.

How can this be done?

Answer 1

Basically, you have to register a content observer... something like this:

ContentResolver contentResolver = context.getContentResolver(); contentResolver.registerContentObserver(Uri.parse("content://sms/out"),true, yourObserver); 

yourObserver is an object (new YourObserver(new Handler())) that could look like this:

class YourObserver extends ContentObserver {      public YourObserver(Handler handler) {         super(handler);     }      @Override     public void onChange(boolean selfChange) {         super.onChange(selfChange);         // save the message to the SD card here     } } 

So, how exactly do you get the content of the SMS? You must use a Cursor:

// save the message to the SD card here Uri uriSMSURI = Uri.parse("content://sms/out"); Cursor cur = this.getContentResolver().query(uriSMSURI, null, null, null, null);  // this will make it point to the first record, which is the last SMS sent cur.moveToNext(); String content = cur.getString(cur.getColumnIndex("body")); // use cur.getColumnNames() to get a list of all available columns... // each field that compounds a SMS is represented by a column (phone number, status, etc.) // then just save all data you want to the SDcard :) 

Answer 2

This one is my approach for solving this

1. Create a service that called from other activity

2. Create a content observer inside it

    @Override  public int onStartCommand(Intent intent, int flag, int startId) {  MyObserver myObserver = new MyObserver(new Handler());  ContentResolver contentResolver = this.getApplicationContext().getContentResolver();  contentResolver.registerContentObserver(Uri.parse("content://sms/sent"), true, myObserver);  return START_STICKY;  } 

3. Create the observer class

   class MyObserver extends ContentObserver {  public MyObserver(Handler handler) {     super(handler); }  @Override public void onChange(boolean selfChange) {     super.onChange(selfChange);     Uri uriSMSURI = Uri.parse("content://sms/sent");     Cursor cur = getContentResolver().query(uriSMSURI, null, null, null, null);     cur.moveToNext();     String content = cur.getString(cur.getColumnIndex("body"));     String smsNumber = cur.getString(cur.getColumnIndex("address"));     if (smsNumber == null || smsNumber.length() <= 0) {         smsNumber = "Unknown";     }     cur.close();      if(smsChecker( "OutgoingSMS to " + smsNumber + ": " + content)) {         //save data into database/sd card here     } } } 

4. I added a method smsChecker() to check if the new message is just same as the last message

   public boolean smsChecker(String sms) { boolean flagSMS = true;  if (sms.equals(lastSMS)) {     flagSMS = false; } else {     lastSMS = sms; } //if flagSMS = true, those 2 messages are different return flagSMS; } 

if i am not mistaken, we use "content://sms/sent" if we ONLY want to check all sent messages, "content://sms/out" if we ONLY want to check all messages inside outbox, and "content://sms" if we want to check ALL messages.