When the system receives an implicit intent to start an activity, it searches for the best activity for the intent by comparing the intent to intent filters based on three aspects:

• The intent action
• The intent data (both URI and data type)
• The intent category

A content URI is a URI that identifies data in a provider. Content URIs include the symbolic name of the entire provider (its authority) and a name that points to a table (a path). When you call a client method to access a table in a provider, the content URI for the table is one of the arguments.

The ContentProvider uses the path part of the content URI to choose the table to access. A provider usually has a path for each table it exposes.

For example, the full URI for the "words" table is:

content://br.com.appname.authority/words