Listening to outgoing sms not working android

Question

I am trying to listen to outgoing sms messages. I was following the accepted answer here but it is not working. I'm not sure where I am going wrong. I am no familiar at all with Content Observers so forgive my ignorance.

I wanted to create it in a service so it would be running all the time. here is my code in that service:

import android.app.Service;
import android.content.ContentResolver;
import android.content.Intent;
import android.database.ContentObserver;
import android.database.Cursor;
import android.net.Uri;
import android.os.Handler;
import android.os.IBinder;
import android.util.Log;

public class SmsOutgoingObserver extends Service {
    public SmsOutgoingObserver() {
    }
    /* this method handles a single incoming request */
    @Override
    public int onStartCommand(Intent intent, int flags, int id) {

        Log.d("OUTGOING", "RUNNING SERVICE");

        return START_STICKY; // stay running
    }
    @Override
    public IBinder onBind(Intent intent) {
        return null; // disable binding
    }

    public class SmsObserver extends ContentObserver {

        public SmsObserver(Handler handler) {
            super(handler);
        }

        @Override
        public void onChange(boolean selfChange) {
            super.onChange(selfChange);

            Uri uriSMSURI = Uri.parse("content://sms/out");
            Cursor cr = SmsOutgoingObserver.this.getContentResolver().query(uriSMSURI, null, null, null, null);

            cr.moveToNext();
            String address = cur.getString(cr.getColumnIndex("body"));

            Log.d("OUTGOING", address);

            cr.close();

            //Database.messageReceived(SmsOutgoingObserver.this, address);
        }
    }
}

What am I doing wrong?

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 18 '16 at 18:48

In addition to the silly mistake on my part that @CommonsWare pointed out, me missing

@Override
public void onCreate() {
    super.onCreate();

    ContentResolver contentResolver = this.getContentResolver();
    contentResolver.registerContentObserver(Uri.parse("content://sms/out"),true, new SmsObserver(new Handler()));
}

the other issue was actually in these two lines

contentResolver.registerContentObserver(Uri.parse("content:&‌#47;/sms/out‌"),true, new SmsObserver(new Handler()));

and

Uri uriSMSURI = Uri.parse("content://sms/out");

where I changed the content://sms/out to content://sms and then proceeded to check for the type to make sure the change I was getting was actually an outgoing message. I also had to make sure to check for multiple calls like so:

if (cr.getInt(cr.getColumnIndex("type")) == 2) {
    if(id != cr.getInt(cr.getColumnIndex(cr.getColumnName(0)))) {
        id = cr.getInt(cr.getColumnIndex(cr.getColumnName(0)));

        String address = cr.getString(cr.getColumnIndex("address"));
        Database.messageSent(SmsOutgoingObserver.this, address);
            Log.d("OUTGOING", address);
        } else {
            Log.d("OUTGOING", "MESSAGE ALREADY LOGGED");
        }
     };
}

and simply defined private int id = 0; as a global variable

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 15 '16 at 21:44

1

Your SmsOutgoingObserver does nothing other than log a message to LogCat. If you want to use SmsObserver, you need to add some code, such as call registerContentObserver(). This is shown in the accepted answer on the question that you linked to.

answered Aug 15 '16 at 21:44

CommonsWare

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I had it in there before I must have erased it accidentally and not realized it I will give it a shot – Santi Gallego Aug 15 '16 at 22:14
@SantiGallego: Having that code in `onCreate()` should work. Note that SMSes do not have to be written to that `ContentProvider`, and that many users may be very irritated with you for trying to have a service run continuously. Google has also hinted that this sort of service may be eliminated in the future. On Android 7.0+, you can use `JobScheduler` to monitor a `ContentProvider` without having to have a service run continuously -- see [this sample app](https://github.com/commonsguy/cw-omnibus/tree/master/JobScheduler) that monitors `ContactsContract`. – CommonsWare Aug 15 '16 at 22:22

Listening to outgoing sms not working android

2 Answers2

Linked