Retrieve Contact name from phone number

Question

I've been looking everywhere since the past few days to find a way to retrieve a contact name using a phone number I already have stored in a variable, unfortunately everything I found so far seems to be using deprecated functions/calls.

Of Course, I tried doing it my own way but I feel like my Android/JAVA knowledge is not good enough to understand this concept yet, keep getting some errors or force close when I try to run anything.

So far the best thing I could find was something like this:

public String getContactName(final String phoneNumber) 
    {  
        Uri uri;
        String[] projection;

        if (Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= 5)
        {
            uri = Uri.parse("content://com.android.contacts/phone_lookup");
            projection = new String[] { "display_name" };
        }
        else
        { 
            uri = Uri.parse("content://contacts/phones/filter");
            projection = new String[] { "name" }; 
        } 

        uri = Uri.withAppendedPath(uri, Uri.encode(phoneNumber)); 
        Cursor cursor = context.getContentResolver().query(uri, projection, null, null, null); 

        String contactName = "";

        if (cursor.moveToFirst()) 
        { 
            contactName = cursor.getString(0);
        } 

        cursor.close();
        cursor = null;

        return contactName; 
    }

But by using this code, Eclipse tells me: context cannot be resolved. A lot of the codes and explanations I found were using this Context thing, but I still don't understand it even after reading this: What is 'Context' on Android?

Any help will be greatly appreciated, Thank you very much

zbr · Accepted Answer · 2013-05-08T19:01:06.313

If you're using this inside an activity, then a context is what you get by using this. So basically here, instead of calling context.getContentResolver(), call this.getContentResolver() or simply just getContentResolver().

Eclipse complains basically because you're trying to call a method of something called context which Eclipse doesn't know because it hasn't been declared anywhere. It would work if you previously did something like Context context = this;, but that's really useless.

getContentResolver() is a method declared and defined by Activity which is a class that your activity extends, therefore you can call it just like that.

I hope it helps. As to what this context really is, I am sorry, but I can't help you with that as I am not even sure I understand it correctly.

Also, please notice, that I haven't checked the code you posted and I don't know if it works for obtaining a contact's name from a phone number. Just wanted to help you with getting rid of the context cannot be resolved error.

Wow this is REALLY helpful, all these hours spent on trying to understand, and you made me understand in 30 seconds. Thank a lot Zabri! — Takoyaro, May 08 '13 at 19:03
Did I? Well, good. :) Would you accept the answer then, please? Thank you. — zbr, May 08 '13 at 19:05

Retrieve Contact name from phone number

1 Answers1