Android has supported enumerating contacts with the ContactsContract provider since API Level 5. For example, to list contacts is as simple as using the ContactContracts.Contacts class, as shown in the following code:

var uri = ContactsContract.Contacts.ContentUri;

string[] projection = {
    ContactsContract.Contacts.InterfaceConsts.Id,
    ContactsContract.Contacts.InterfaceConsts.DisplayName };

var cursor = ManagedQuery (uri, projection, null, null, null);

if (cursor.MoveToFirst ()) {
    do {
        Console.WriteLine ("Contact ID: {0}, Contact Name: {1}",
            cursor.GetString (cursor.GetColumnIndex (projection [0])),
            cursor.GetString (cursor.GetColumnIndex (projection [1])));

    } while (cursor.MoveToNext());
}

With Android 4 (API Level 14), a new ContactsContact.Profile class is available through the ContactsContract provider. The ContactsContact.Profile provides access to a personal profile for the owner of a device, which includes contact data such as the device owner’s name and phone number.

Required Permissions

To read and write contact data, applications must request the Read_Contacts and Write_Contacts permissions, respectively. Additionally, to read and edit the user profile, applications must request the Read_Profile and Write_Profile permissions.

Updating Profile Data

Once these permissions have been set, an application can use normal Android techniques to interact with the user profile’s data. For example, to update the profile’s display name we would call ContentResolver.Update with a Uri retrieved through the ContactsContract.Profile.ContentRawContactsUri property, as shown below:

var values = new ContentValues ();

values.Put (ContactsContract.Contacts.InterfaceConsts.DisplayName,
    "John Doe");

ContentResolver.Update (ContactsContract.Profile.ContentRawContactsUri,
    values, null, null);

Reading Profile Data

Issuing a query to the ContactsContact.Profile.ContentUri reads back the profile data. For example, the following code will read the user profile’s display name:

string[] projection = {
    ContactsContract.Contacts.InterfaceConsts.DisplayName };

var cursor = ManagedQuery (uri, projection, null, null, null);

if (cursor.MoveToFirst ()) {
    Console.WriteLine(
        cursor.GetString (cursor.GetColumnIndex (projection [0])));
}

Navigating to the People App

Finally, to navigate to the user profile in the new People app that comes with Android 4, simply create an Intent with an ActionView action and a ContactsContract.Profile.ContentUri, and pass it to the StartActivity method like this:

var intent = new Intent (Intent.ActionView,
    ContactsContract.Profile.ContentUri);           
StartActivity (intent);

When running the above code, the People app will load to the user profile, as shown in the following screenshot:

Working with the user profile is now similar to interacting with other data in Android, and offers an additional level of device personalization.