Example: Communication between Activity and Service using Messaging

Question

I couldn\'t find any examples of how to send messages between an activity and a service, and I have spent far too many hours figuring this out. Here is an example project fo

Answer 1

For sending data to a service you can use:

Intent intent = new Intent(getApplicationContext(), YourService.class);
intent.putExtra("SomeData","ItValue");
startService(intent);

And after in service in onStartCommand() get data from intent.

For sending data or event from a service to an application (for one or more activities):

private void sendBroadcastMessage(String intentFilterName, int arg1, String extraKey) {
    Intent intent = new Intent(intentFilterName);
    if (arg1 != -1 && extraKey != null) {
        intent.putExtra(extraKey, arg1);
    }
    sendBroadcast(intent);
}

This method is calling from your service. You can simply send data for your Activity.

private void someTaskInYourService(){

    //For example you downloading from server 1000 files
    for(int i = 0; i < 1000; i++) {
        Thread.sleep(5000) // 5 seconds. Catch in try-catch block
        sendBroadCastMessage(Events.UPDATE_DOWNLOADING_PROGRESSBAR, i,0,"up_download_progress");
    }

For receiving an event with data, create and register method registerBroadcastReceivers() in your activity:

private void registerBroadcastReceivers(){
    broadcastReceiver = new BroadcastReceiver() {
        @Override
        public void onReceive(Context context, Intent intent) {
            int arg1 = intent.getIntExtra("up_download_progress",0);
            progressBar.setProgress(arg1);
        }
    };
    IntentFilter progressfilter = new IntentFilter(Events.UPDATE_DOWNLOADING_PROGRESS);
    registerReceiver(broadcastReceiver,progressfilter);

For sending more data, you can modify method sendBroadcastMessage();. Remember: you must register broadcasts in onResume() & unregister in onStop() methods!

UPDATE

Please don't use my type of communication between Activity & Service. This is the wrong way. For a better experience please use special libs, such us:

1) EventBus from greenrobot

2) Otto from Square Inc

P.S. I'm only using EventBus from greenrobot in my projects,

Answer 2

Note: You don't need to check if your service is running, CheckIfServiceIsRunning(), because bindService() will start it if it isn't running.

Also: if you rotate the phone you don't want it to bindService() again, because onCreate() will be called again. Be sure to define onConfigurationChanged() to prevent this.

Answer 3

Message msg = Message.obtain(null, 2, 0, 0);
                    Bundle bundle = new Bundle();
                    bundle.putString("url", url);
                    bundle.putString("names", names);
                    bundle.putString("captions",captions); 
                    msg.setData(bundle);

So you send it to the service. Afterward receive.