Content provider URL

Description

Content providers provide REST-like URLs to retrieve or manipulate data.

Content URIs in Android look similar to HTTP URIs, except that they start with content and have the general form

content://*/*/*

or

content://authority-name/path-segment1/path-segment2/etc...

Example

The URI to identify a directory or a collection of notes in the NotePadProvider database is

content://com.google.provider.NotePad/Notes

The URI to identify a specific note is

content://com.google.provider.NotePad/Notes/#

where # is the id of a particular note.

Here's an example URI that identifies a note numbered 9 in a database of notes:

content://com.google.provider.NotePad/notes/9

After content: the URI contains a unique identifier for the authority, which is used to locate the provider in the provider registry.

In the preceding example, com.google.provider.NotePad is the authority portion of the URI.

/notes/9 is the path section of the URI that is specific to each provider.

The notes and 9 portions of the path section are called path segments.

Each provider should interpret the path section and path segments of the URIs.

Example 2

The following code lists examples of URIs that some data providers accept:

content://media/internal/images
content://media/external/images
content://contacts/people/
content://contacts/people/9
/*  w w  w  . jav a2 s. c  o  m*/

media (content://media) and contacts (content://contacts) don't have a fully qualified structure.

A content provider's URIs also resemble the names of stored procedures in a database.

The provider is also expected to alter content at this URI using any of the state-change methods: insert, update, or delete.