Skip to content

Blank contacts

Blank RawContacts and blank Contacts do not have any rows in the Data table. These do not have any non-blank data.

An entity is blank if the concrete implementation of Entity.isBlank returns true.

The Contacts Providers allows for RawContacts that have no rows in the Data table (let's call them "blanks") to exist. The native Contacts app does not allow insertion of new RawContacts without at least one data row. It also deletes blanks on update. Despite seemingly not allowing blanks, the native Contacts app shows them.

ℹ️ This library provides APIs that follows the native (AOSP) Contacts app behavior by default but also allows you to override the default behavior.

There are two scenarios where blanks may exist.

  1. Contact with RawContact(s) with no Data row(s).
    • In this case, the Contact is blank as well as its RawContact(s).
  2. Contact that has RawContact with Data row(s) and a RawContact with no Data row.
    • In this case, the Contact and the RawContact with Data row(s) are not blank but the RawContact with no Data row is blank.

Blanks in queries

A where clause that uses any fields from the Data table Fields may exclude blanks in the result. There are some joined fields that can be used to match blanks as long as no other fields are in the where clause...

  • Fields.Contact enables matching blank Contacts. The result will include all RawContact(s) belonging to the Contact(s), including blank(s). Examples;

  • Fields.Contact.Id equalTo 5

  • Fields.Contact.Id in listOf(1,2,3) and Fields.Contact.DisplayNamePrimary contains "a"

  • Fields.Contact.Options.Starred equalTo true

  • Fields.RawContact enables matching blank RawContacts. The result will include all Contact(s) these belong to, including sibling RawContacts (blank and not blank). Examples;

  • Fields.RawContact.Id equalTo 5

  • Fields.RawContact.Id notIn listOf(1,2,3)

Blanks will not be included in the results even if they technically should if joined fields from other tables are in the where. In the below example, matching the Contact.Id to an existing blank Contact with Id of 5 will yield no results because it is joined by Fields.Email, which is not a part of Fields.Contact. It should technically return the blank Contact with Id of 5 because the OR operator is used. However, because we internally need to query the Contacts table to match the blanks, a DB exception will be thrown by the Contacts Provider because Fields.Email.Address ("data1" and "mimetype") are columns from the Data table that do not exist in the Contacts table. The same applies to the Fields.RawContact.

  • Fields.Contact.Id equalTo 5 OR (Fields.Email.Address.isNotNull())
  • `Fields.RawContact.Id ... OR (Fields.Phone.Number...)

Blank Contacts/RawContacts vs blank Data

Blank RawContacts and blank Contacts do not have any rows in the Data table. These do not have any non-blank data.

Blank data are data entities that have only null, empty, or blank primary value(s).

ℹ️ For more info, read about Blank data.