How to have Android Service communicate with Activity

Question

I\'m writing my first Android application and trying to get my head around communication between services and activities. I have a Service that will run in the background an

Answer 1

Besides LocalBroadcastManager , Event Bus and Messenger already answered in this question,we can use Pending Intent to communicate from service.

As mentioned here in my blog post

Communication between service and Activity can be done using PendingIntent.For that we can use createPendingResult().createPendingResult() creates a new PendingIntent object which you can hand to service to use and to send result data back to your activity inside onActivityResult(int, int, Intent) callback.Since a PendingIntent is Parcelable , and can therefore be put into an Intent extra,your activity can pass this PendingIntent to the service.The service, in turn, can call send() method on the PendingIntent to notify the activity via onActivityResult of an event.

Activity

public class PendingIntentActivity extends AppCompatActivity
{
@Override
protected void onCreate(@Nullable Bundle savedInstanceState) {
super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
setContentView(R.layout.activity_main);

PendingIntent pendingResult = createPendingResult(
100, new Intent(), 0);
Intent intent = new Intent(getApplicationContext(), PendingIntentService.class);
intent.putExtra("pendingIntent", pendingResult);
startService(intent);

}

@Override
protected void onActivityResult(int requestCode, int resultCode, Intent data) {
if (requestCode == 100 && resultCode==200) {
Toast.makeText(this,data.getStringExtra("name"),Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show();
}
super.onActivityResult(requestCode, resultCode, data);
}
}

Service

public class PendingIntentService extends Service {

    private static final String[] items= { "lorem", "ipsum", "dolor",
            "sit", "amet", "consectetuer", "adipiscing", "elit", "morbi",
            "vel", "ligula", "vitae", "arcu", "aliquet", "mollis", "etiam",
            "vel", "erat", "placerat", "ante", "porttitor", "sodales",
            "pellentesque", "augue", "purus" };
    private PendingIntent data;

    @Override
    public void onCreate() {
        super.onCreate();
    }

    @Override
    public int onStartCommand(Intent intent, int flags, int startId) {

        data = intent.getParcelableExtra("pendingIntent");

        new LoadWordsThread().start();
        return START_NOT_STICKY;
    }

    @Override
    public IBinder onBind(Intent intent) {
        return null;
    }

    @Override
    public void onDestroy() {
        super.onDestroy();
    }

    class LoadWordsThread extends Thread {
        @Override
        public void run() {
            for (String item : items) {
                if (!isInterrupted()) {

                    Intent result = new Intent();
                    result.putExtra("name", item);
                    try {
                        data.send(PendingIntentService.this,200,result);
                    } catch (PendingIntent.CanceledException e) {

                        e.printStackTrace();
                    }
                    SystemClock.sleep(400);

                }
            }
        }
    }
}