Android :: Extended ContentProvider Not Behaving Properly

I'm trying to implement a ContentProvider wrapped around an SQLite database.

I've followed the tutorial here in building my ContentProvider:tutorial

I want to test what I have; so I'm attempting to instantiate my new ContentProvider, retrieve a Cursor from the query handler, and attach it to my CursorAdapter. Currently, I'm doing this in the onCreate of my Activity (I know this is bad practice, I'm just testing, I will move it to a service eventually).

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When I launch my application, the onCreate method of my extended ContentProvider gets executed. The database helper object gets created, the database gets created, and the onCreate method returns true. However, when I try to use my ContentProvider (with the code above), in the open() method the database helper object gets created, but getWritableDatabase() returns null. Also, when I call open(), the reference to getContext() is null.

Note: everything else seems to be working fine. When I call query, it hits my query handler, recognizes the Uri and attempts to run my query code (which obviously blows up because the database object is null).

Here are my extended ContentProvider and database helper:

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I'm wondering if I should somehow be referencing whatever instance of MessagesProvider was created when I launched the application, instead of declaring a new one (p) and using it?

I updated the onCreate code in my Activity to the following, but managedQuery returned null:

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