A content provider is the fourth component of an Android application. It is used to manage access to a structured set of data. Content providers encapsulate the data, and provide abstraction and the mechanism to define data security. However, content providers are primarily intended to be used by other applications that access the provider using a provider's client object. Together, providers and provider clients offer a consistent, standard interface for data, which also handles interprocess communication and secure data access.

A content provider allows one app to share data with other applications. By design, an Android SQLite database created by an application is private to the application; it is excellent if you consider the security point of view, but troublesome when you want to share data across different applications. This is where a content provider comes to the rescue; you can easily share data by building your content provider. It is important to note...