Custom actions in Contacts app (similar to G+)

android, android-contacts

Solution

You just need to add additional rows in the `ContactsContract.Data` table when inserting a contact. See "contacts.xml structure" in the documentation:

The `<ContactsDataKind>` element controls the display of your application's custom data rows in the contacts application's UI. It has the following syntax:

<ContactsDataKind
    android:mimeType="MIMEtype"
    android:icon="icon_resources"
    android:summaryColumn="column_name"
    android:detailColumn="column_name">

For each one of these, the Contact's app ContactDetailFragment adds one `DataViewEntry`. The list entries acts as the data for an adapter used to build the contact details UI. When an entry containing an Intent is clicked, `startActivity()` is called. This Intent is built from the data item's MIME type and Uri.

entry.intent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_VIEW);
entry.intent.setDataAndType(entry.uri, entry.mimetype);

For example, the G+ app has the following `es_contacts.xml`:

<ContactsDataKind android:summaryColumn="data2" android:detailColumn="data3"

And creates the rows like this:

ContentProviderOperation.newInsert(ContactsContract.Data.CONTENT_URI)
    .withValueBackReference("raw_contact_id", i1)
    .withValue("mimetype", "vnd.android.cursor.item/vnd.googleplus.profile.comm")
    .withValue("data4", Integer.valueOf(14))
    .withValue("data5", "hangout")
    .withValue("data3", context.getString(R.string.start_hangout_action_label));

ContentProviderOperation.newInsert(ContactsContract.Data.CONTENT_URI)
    .withValueBackReference("raw_contact_id", i1)
    .withValue("mimetype", "vnd.android.cursor.item/vnd.googleplus.profile")
    .withValue("data4", Integer.valueOf(20))
    .withValue("data5", "addtocircle")
    .withValue("data3", context.getString(R.string.add_to_circle_action_label));

Problem

I'm creating an application that I'd like to integrate with Android's contacts/people application. I set up my custom mime type, a syncadapter, and a contacts.xml file that has a ContactsDataKind element. This seems to work fine, but it seems it's not possible to define multiple actions per data kind (in this case, I'd like people to be able to view a contact's profile, as well as send them a message directly. The G+ app seems to handle this, but I've been unable to figure out how they did it. Here's a screenshot of the G+ integration in People: https://i.stack.imgur.com/0bj6I.png Thank you for your time!

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