What should I use Android AccountManager for?

Question

I've seen AccountManager in the Android SDK and that it is used for storing account information. Thus, I cannot find any general discussion of what it is intended for. Does anyone know of any helpful discussions of what the intention behind AccountManager is and what it buys you? Any opinions of what type of Accounts this is suitable for? Would this be where you'd put your user's account information for a general web service?

Answer 1

This question is a bit old, but I think it is still of good interest.

AccountManager, SyncAdapter and ContentProvidergo together.

• You cannot have a SyncAdapter without an Account in the AccountManager.
• You cannot have a SyncAdapterwithout a ContentProvider.

But you can:

• use the ContentProvider without the others.
• use the AccountManager without the others (but you cannot use an AccountManager without a SyncAdapter before Android 2.2 / Froyo API 8)

With AccountManager / SyncAdapter / ContentProvider:

• AccountManager gives users a central point (Settings > Accounts) to define their credentials
• Android decides when synchronization can be done via SyncAdapter. This can be good to optimize battery (no sync is done when network is down, for instance)
• ContentProvider is a convenient way to share data across applications Note: there are other methods of inter-process communication on Android.
• ContentProvider schedules the database access in a background thread The AsyncQueryHanlder helps to query the ContentProvider in a background thread, preventing Application Not Responsive (ANR) errors while not requiring you to explicitly handle threading.
• ContentProvider ties into ContentResolver's observer: this means it is easy to notify views when content is changed

Bottom line: the framework AccountManager / SyncAdapter / ContentProvider helps if you want to synchronize data from a web resource. Fake/Dumb implementations are required on API 7. Also

• If you only want to store data, you should consider a simpler mechanism for data storage
• If you only need to fetch an only resource, you can use an AsyncTaskLoader
• If you want to load images asynchronously, you can use specialized libraries like Square Picasso
• If you only want to execute some code at a given time, you can consider a Service / Alarm
• only available from API >= 7 (this doesn't matter anymore)

Finally, if you use a SyncAdapter, seriously consider Firebase Cloud Messaging (previously Google Cloud Messaging) aka "push notifications" to have fresher updates and optimized battery usage.