I have to develop an application where i have to continuously collect the GPS, accelerometer data [esp. when user is in motion i.e traveling, else it can be relaxed). Also I have to communicate with web server and handle the response from the sever. So for this(handling response ) part application should continuously poll.
Based on response from server I have show UI to the user.
I am not very clear about the design.
Do I have to create activity from where I start service. Should service be ran as a separate thread(this always runs in background).
I am planning to create two services. One service to continuously collect GPS data.
Other service for communicating with the web server[start timer/alarm manager] for polling. ALso can these two services communicate with each other.
Also after processing the response frm server the service should be able to start user interface to show some form. I am not clear how to handle this.
Also is acquiring wakelock required if I have to collect GPS data continuously.
Please clarify.
Thanks
2 Answers 2
You can use an AlarmManager for polling. You just need to set the interval. You will notice that most components Application, Service, Activity all are Contexts. So they all can get Application Context. The way to think about communication is that the android message/event is essentially the Intent. So you define your custom Intents. You just need to give them a custom name for the action. Then you use Intent filters. You can do point to point messaging by doing startService, startActivity or you can broadcast the intent. I would recommend that you communicate via broadcasted intents. Message routing is handled using Intent filters. Starting form etc would just be a startActivity(Intent) and the Intent itself could contain using intent.getExtras(). Just so long as you can put it in the Bundle you can pass it and display. So to answer your question, just use Intents for everything. Use broadcasting and filtering for communication and Intents again to start your activity for display.
Comments
The May 10th Google I/O had an afternoon session called Android Pro Tips. The first section covered several different approaches to making your app more continuously location aware.