Re: [android-developers] Communicating from Android Service to an Activity

madmax wrote:
> I have an Android Service that runs indefinitely

That's not possible and is not a good idea in general:

http://www.androidguys.com/2009/09/09/diamonds-are-forever-services-are-not/

> and
> wants to notify when a specific interesting event occurs to an
> activity. Now the problem is the "interesting event" occurs anytime
> and i don't want to "poll" to the service all the time to get that
> event... The service itself should "notify" the activity about the
> event occuring. I looked around and came across a few methods to do
> it.
> 1) Using Intents and putExtras() : This method wont suffice for me
> because i "don't" want to start a new activity all the time.
> 2) Using aidl : I already have an aidl for communication between the
> service and activity. This is essentially the polling mechanism.

Have the service send a broadcast Intent via sendBroadcast(), and have
the activity (when it is on-screen) dynamically register for that Intent
via registerReceiver().

Here is a sample project from one of my books that demonstrates the
technique:

http://github.com/commonsguy/cw-android/tree/master/Service/WeatherPlus/

--
Mark Murphy (a Commons Guy)
http://commonsware.com | http://github.com/commonsguy
http://commonsware.com/blog | http://twitter.com/commonsguy

Android Training...At Your Office: http://commonsware.com/training

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