Get E 164 format of contacts in Android API less than 16

Question

I retrieve the list of contact numbers from the phone using the following code:

Cursor c = getContentResolver().query(ContactsContract.CommonDataKinds.Phone.CONTENT_URI, null, null, null, null);

while(c.moveToNext()){
      Log.d(TAG,"NO.: "+ c.getString(c.getColumnIndex(ContactsContract.CommonDataKinds.Phone.NORMALIZED_NUMBER)));
}

In API 16 and above, this would work perfectly for me, as I want ALL the contacts formatted in the E 164 format, no matter how they are stored by the user.

1. However, for APIs below 16, the above code won't work and I am not able to get the E 164 format for all contacts by using the following line:

    c.getString(c.getColumnIndex(ContactsContract.CommonDataKinds.Phone.NUMBER));
   

The 'PhoneNumberUtils' class could not come to any use.

Also, I cannot use the libphonenumber library to convert numbers to their E 164 format, as I don't know the ISO 3166-1 two letter country-code of the contacts.

Is there any way in which I can obtain the ISO 3166-1 two letter country-code for each contact in Android, so that I can use the libphonenumber library ?

Or is there any other solution to achieve point 1. ?

The numbers retrieved from the phone can be of any format eg.

• Local : 965XXXXXXX
• National : 0965XXXXXXX
• International : +91 96 5X XXXXXX
• and other

whereas the E 164 is +91XXXXXXXXXX where 91 is the country code.

Any help would be much appreciated !

Mcgehee

Answer 1

You can use the network language for the default country code, available using getNetworkCountryIso. This method may be unreliable on CDMA networks (use getPhoneType to determine if on a CDMA network).

It will be the same value used when phoning the contact, so you should get the correct value.

For local to national numbers, I can't help you as I don't have such features in my country and don't know how it works in yours.

Backbone

this was not the question. – Mcgehee

With this you can know the two letter code needed for libphonenumber – Backbone

It gives me the user's mobile network country code and not that of the contacts that are there in his contact list. – Mcgehee

Yes, but the number of the contact is made to be phoned directly no? So its a good guess to assume that it'll be the same a the network country – Backbone

I was looking for a more generic answer. Say I am from one country, I am living in another country and have the phone number of this new country. Then in that case majority of my contacts will have my home-country numbers and then this assumption would totally fail. – Mcgehee

Yes but then all your contacts will be useless as you would have to edit the number each time you want to call them, it's the same problem as your program no ? – Backbone

Answer 2

Android didn't store the number in E.16 format before Honeycomb. Therefore, you need to format it yourself using the libphonenumber library if you are supporting lower API levels. The Contacts app uses the CountryDetector service for determining the country code if none is provided, which uses comprehensive heuristics based on the information available on the device. This service is not part of the public API, and wasn't available pre-Honeycomb in any case, but you can copy the code in the ComprehensiveCountryDetector class to reuse in your own app.

Note that since Honeycomb's source is not available, and I didn't have the opportunity to test on a Honeycomb device, I can't comment on what the state is on Honeycomb related to these issues.

Brim