One of the great new user-facing features of Android 2.0 is the is the new Facebook app, which brings your Facebook contacts and statuses into your Android contacts database:
So, how exactly does my Nexus One know that Chris is excited about the upcoming launch of his new mobile apps? The answer is a Contacts sync provider in the Facebook app. Read on to learn how to create your own!
One of the highlights of the Android 2.0 SDK is that you can write custom sync providers to integrate with the system contacts, calendars, etc. The only problem is that there’s very little documentation on how it all fits together. And worse, if you mess up in certain places, the Android system will crash and reboot! Always up for a challenge, I’ve navigated through the sparse documentation, vague mailing list posts, and the Android source code itself to build a sync provider for our Last.fm app. Want to know how to build your own? Read on!