Get list of photo galleries on Android

Question

I'm looking for: A list of the existing photo gallery names (hopefully their top thumbnail as well) The contents of the gallery (I can then load thumbnails and full size as needed)

How would I go about getting a list of the "Galleries" (don't know if that's the proper term in android for the groupings of images visible in the Gallery app...) and their contents? I need access to the gallery in it's structure without using the existing gallery display (I'm creating a totally new one, not an over layer to the photo requestor etc.)

I assume MediaStore.Images is where I need to be but I don't see anything that will give me the groupings...

Answer 1

Groupings are defined by MediaStore.Images.Media.BUCKET_DISPLAY_NAME. Here is the sample code to list the images and log their bucket name and date_taken:

// which image properties are we querying
String[] projection = new String[] {
        MediaStore.Images.Media._ID,
        MediaStore.Images.Media.BUCKET_DISPLAY_NAME,
        MediaStore.Images.Media.DATE_TAKEN
};

// content:// style URI for the "primary" external storage volume
Uri images = MediaStore.Images.Media.EXTERNAL_CONTENT_URI;

// Make the query.
Cursor cur = managedQuery(images,
        projection, // Which columns to return
        null,       // Which rows to return (all rows)
        null,       // Selection arguments (none)
        null        // Ordering
        );

Log.i("ListingImages"," query count=" + cur.getCount());

if (cur.moveToFirst()) {
    String bucket;
    String date;
    int bucketColumn = cur.getColumnIndex(
        MediaStore.Images.Media.BUCKET_DISPLAY_NAME);

    int dateColumn = cur.getColumnIndex(
        MediaStore.Images.Media.DATE_TAKEN);

    do {
        // Get the field values
        bucket = cur.getString(bucketColumn);
        date = cur.getString(dateColumn);

        // Do something with the values.
        Log.i("ListingImages", " bucket=" + bucket 
               + "  date_taken=" + date);
    } while (cur.moveToNext());

}