Listen outgoing SMS or sent box in Android

Solution 1:

Basically, you have to register a content observer... something like this:

ContentResolver contentResolver = context.getContentResolver();
contentResolver.registerContentObserver(Uri.parse("content://sms/out"),true, yourObserver);

yourObserver is an object (new YourObserver(new Handler())) that could look like this:

class YourObserver extends ContentObserver {

    public YourObserver(Handler handler) {
        super(handler);
    }

    @Override
    public void onChange(boolean selfChange) {
        super.onChange(selfChange);
        // save the message to the SD card here
    }
}

So, how exactly do you get the content of the SMS? You must use a Cursor:

// save the message to the SD card here
Uri uriSMSURI = Uri.parse("content://sms/out");
Cursor cur = this.getContentResolver().query(uriSMSURI, null, null, null, null);
 // this will make it point to the first record, which is the last SMS sent
cur.moveToNext();
String content = cur.getString(cur.getColumnIndex("body"));
// use cur.getColumnNames() to get a list of all available columns...
// each field that compounds a SMS is represented by a column (phone number, status, etc.)
// then just save all data you want to the SDcard :)

Solution 2:

This one is my approach for solving this

1. Create a service that called from other activity

2. Create a content observer inside it

    @Override
    public int onStartCommand(Intent intent, int flag, int startId) {
    MyObserver myObserver = new MyObserver(new Handler());
    ContentResolver contentResolver = this.getApplicationContext().getContentResolver();
    contentResolver.registerContentObserver(Uri.parse("content://sms/sent"), true, myObserver);
    return START_STICKY;
    }
   

3. Create the observer class

   class MyObserver extends ContentObserver {
   
   public MyObserver(Handler handler) {
       super(handler);
   }
   
   @Override
   public void onChange(boolean selfChange) {
       super.onChange(selfChange);
       Uri uriSMSURI = Uri.parse("content://sms/sent");
       Cursor cur = getContentResolver().query(uriSMSURI, null, null, null, null);
       cur.moveToNext();
       String content = cur.getString(cur.getColumnIndex("body"));
       String smsNumber = cur.getString(cur.getColumnIndex("address"));
       if (smsNumber == null || smsNumber.length() <= 0) {
           smsNumber = "Unknown";
       }
       cur.close();
   
       if(smsChecker( "OutgoingSMS to " + smsNumber + ": " + content)) {
           //save data into database/sd card here
       }
   }
   }
   

4. I added a method smsChecker() to check if the new message is just same as the last message

   public boolean smsChecker(String sms) {
   boolean flagSMS = true;
   
   if (sms.equals(lastSMS)) {
       flagSMS = false;
   }
   else {
       lastSMS = sms;
   }
   //if flagSMS = true, those 2 messages are different
   return flagSMS;
   }
   

if i am not mistaken, we use "content://sms/sent" if we ONLY want to check all sent messages, "content://sms/out" if we ONLY want to check all messages inside outbox, and "content://sms" if we want to check ALL messages.