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[MUSIC]

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Hi, I'm Ben and in this workshop we're
going to learn about content providers.

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A content provider is basically just
an interface for working with a dataset.

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You can think of it as a middleman
between your app and its data.

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Unfortunately, content providers get kind
of a bad rap but it's not their fault.

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They're just misunderstood.

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You see, content providers were created
to allow apps to share their data with

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other apps.

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So if you don't plan on sharing
your data with other applications,

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you don't need to use a content provider.

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Which means that almost all apps
don't need to use a content provider.

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And I think that's what makes them seem so
difficult.

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There's a lot of folks who get the idea
that they should be using a content

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provider when really they'd be
fine with a local database or

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even just shared preferences.

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That said, there are a few places where
content providers can come in handy.

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In fact, the Android system itself makes
use of a bunch of content providers.

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Your alarms, contacts and
even your calendar are all available to

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other applications through
content providers.

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In the case of alarms, the Android system
has an app that stores all the data for

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your alarms.

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And that app has a content provider
to make that data accessible to

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other applications.

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This way app developers like us can write
apps to access that data and set alarms.

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So we might have multiple alarm apps, but
they're all looking at the same data.

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And that's what makes content providers so
powerful,

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they give us a way to have a common
dataset across multiple applications.

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For this workshop,
we're going to make a new content provider

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to keep track of our VICs,
very important contacts.

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It will be kind of like the already
existing contacts provider

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except this one will only
have very important contacts.

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In order to focus on content providers,
we're going to start with an already built

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app that uses a SQL like
database to store the VICs.

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So if you're not familiar with SQL, you
might want to check out some of the links

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in the teacher's' notes
before we get started.

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And on that note,

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join me in the next video to start
diving into content providers.