Introduction to Content Providers

Introduction to Content Providers

1. Content providers

   • Content providers can help an manage access to data stored
   • They encapsulate the data, and provide mechanisms for defining data security.
   • Are the standard interface that connects data in one process with code running in another process.
   • You can configure a content provider to allow other applications
   • Classes rely on the ContentProvider
     • AbstractThreadedSyncAdapter
     • CursorAdapter
     • CursorLoader
   • Use content providers if you plan to share data.
   • You need your own content provider in the following cases
     • Implement custom search suggestions in your application
     • Use a content provider to expose your application data to widgets
     • Copy and paste complex data or files from your application to other applications
   • The Android framework
     • Audio
     • video
     • images
     • personal contact information
   • manage access to a variety of data
     • structured data
       • SQLite relational database
     • unstructured data
       • image files

2. Advantages of content providers

   • Offer granular control over the permissions for accessing data
   • Restrict access to a content or configure different permissions for reading and writing data.
   • Use a content provider to abstract away the details for accessing different data sources
   • CursorLoader objects rely on content providers to run asynchronous queries

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