get deleted contacts from ContactsContract.RawContacts.CONTENT_URI

Question

This query returns deleted contacts some time. I have noticed if the deleted contacts belong to Gmail account and have numbers then this query will not return any result.

String WHERE_DELETED = "( " + ContactsContract.RawContacts.DELETED + "=1)";

Cursor cursor = context.getContentResolver().query(ContactsContract.RawContacts.CONTENT_URI,
                null,
                WHERE_DELETED,
                null,
                null);

Answer 1

The RawContact.DELETED marks the RawContact for deletion, once the relevant SyncAdapter wakes up and syncs the deletion to the server (eg Google Contacts Server) that RawContact is actually deleted from the DB and can no longer be queried .

See official documentation :

The "deleted" flag: "0" by default, "1" if the row has been marked for deletion. When delete(Uri, String, String[]) is called on a raw contact, it is marked for deletion and removed from its aggregate contact. The sync adaptor deletes the raw contact on the server and then calls ContactResolver.delete once more, this time passing the CALLER_IS_SYNCADAPTER query parameter to finalize the data removal.

What you can do is query the ContactsContract.DeletedContacts table which holds a record of Contacts deleted in the last 30 days, see here: https://developer.android.com/reference/android/provider/ContactsContract.DeletedContacts.html