Saving Data on Android

4
Chapter 4: 
ContentProvider
By Jennifer Bailey
Being able to persist structured data in a SQLite database is an excellent feature 
included in the Android SDK. However, this data is only accessible by the app that 
created it. What if an app would like to share data with another app? 
ContentProvider
 is the tool that allows apps to share persisted files and data with 
one another.
Content providers sit between the app's data source and provide a means to manage 
this data. This can be a helpful organizational tool in an app, even if the app is not 
intended to share its data externally with other apps. Content providers provide a 
standardized interface that can connect data in one process with code running in 
another process. They encapsulate the data and provide mechanisms for defining 
data security at a granular level. A content provider can be used to aggregate 
multiple data sources and abstract away the details.
Although it can be a good idea to use a content provider to better organize and 
manage the data in an app, this is not a requirement if the app is not going to share 
its data.
One of the simplest use cases of a content provider is to gain access to the Contacts 
of a device via a content provider. Another common built-in provider in the Android 
platform is the user dictionary. The user dictionary holds spellings of non-standard 
words specific to the user.