ContentObserver - just can't believe what I have read

Question

I have read and read related Q&A and can't believe that if my custom ContentProvider does things like this:

insertUri = ContentUris.withAppendedId( Data2TableMetaData.CONTENT_URI, rowId)
// notify listeners
getContext().getContentResolver().notifyChange(insertUri, null);

... ContentObservers do not have a way to retrieve the rowId.

Is this really right? I think I must be missing something because this just doesn't seem nice.

Answer 1

you are right. The callback interface does not contain info on what changed, only that a change has happened. But generally developers are encouraged to use things like CursorLoaders which do all the heavy lifting for you. http://developer.android.com/reference/android/content/CursorLoader.html

However, now with the new Android 16 api it is possible to retrieve the URI of the row in the OnChange method.

Answer 2

In api level 16, ContentObserver does receive the uri, which has the rowId. However, before that, for a situation when you are inserting a row but then only want to listen to that rowId, you can call ContentResolver.registerContentObserver right after inserting, once you know the rowId.