Android ContactsContract and building across multiple SDK versions

android, contacts, java

Solution

You can support both versions on Android using Java Reflection. Amusingly, the answer to your question can be found in a recent question about reflection used to solve this exact problem:

Uri baseUri = Contacts.Phones.CONTENT_FILTER_URL;
try {
    Class<?> c = Class.forName("android.provider.ContactsContract$PhoneLookup");
    baseUri = (Uri) c.getField("CONTENT_FILTER_URI").get(baseUri);
} 
    catch (Exception e) {
}

Problem

I need my app to run on all Android versions, but the Contacts API changed in 2.0. In SDK 1.6 and earlier I use android.provider.Contacts to query the contacts DB, but this does not work in 2.0 Instead, for 2.0 I use android.provider.ContactsContract. This presents a problem: when I have code for ContactsContract, my app will not build for 1.6 and earlier. Do I need to have two separate versions of my app (one for <= 1.6 and one for 2.0 and later) or is there a way to avoid doing this?

Original source

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