First time I have tried to implement either of these and I am unsure which to use.
I want my application to create a time frame, e.g. 2/3/12 to 7/3/12. Multiple time frames such as this can be created. A different intervals (e.g. every 4 hours) I would like my application to preform some actions for each time frame. This needs to be done in the background.
I have first tried to implement this with a Service, but am having performing all the actions for each of the time frames concurrently. After reading the android blog "Multitasking the android way" I think that perhaps BroadcastReceivers are better.
Please advise
Please see my answer about using the AlarmManager - Running task periodicaly(once a day/once a week)
If you are only running a process at a set time rather than constantly (e.g. monitoring audio levels) then you are going to ask a service to sit there 90% of the time and do nothing except waste battery power. The AlarmManager solves this problem as it notifies the broadcast receiver to execute at the given times.
Edit: Also bear in mind that after phone restart all alarms are removed so you will need to register a broadcast receiver to be notified of the device boot-up so you can re-register any Alarms that are needed.
You should probably be using the AlarmManager and a IntentService.
The AlarmManager will kick of your IntentService at specified intervals. You can kick off the IntentService for each set of actions.
Related
I have a service that runs well but when phone goes to deep sleep , the service stop working .
I want to make use of some android class that makes the service to run everyday
at specific time ,??
i have tried wakelock but it drains the battery very fast for 24/24 cpu on
Any HELP ??
In case this becomes a bigger discussion then our comments. I'll list my answer here.
So your goal is to schedule a job with the alarm manager. Just make yourself a broadcast receiver class and register it on your app's startup. Then you will get code to run on each received notification.
If you need your service to run one time use an IntentService for efficiency instead of regular service.
Also, if you need to make sure it starts automatically then you should register for receiving of phone boot so that you can start your scheduled job again.
The link example:
Schedule a TimerTask at specific time once per day in a service in android
Better solution: you can use any of them alarm manager/jobscheduler/GCMNetworkManager
Create a alarm with looping every 24 hr interval.
That's all you need.
PS: Service will drain your battery.
Pretty new to android, so forgive me if this is a dumb question...
So, I'm making an app with a countdown timer that will ring periodically, and then again when the countdown hits zero - simple enough. However, I want the app to keep running even when the user closes the application or the phone is asleep, so that whenever the timer rings, the app will wake up and display an activity showing the time until the countdown is finished. To do this, I'll need to use a service, and lo and behold, the google devs made the AlarmManager service just for me! Sweet!
However, I noticed 2 things:
1) the AlarmManager class has no default constructor, so I'm assuming I can't just extend it and tack some logic on so that I can get all this done in one shot. Ok, cool - I'll just make a service that instantiates AlarmManager at the start, and implement my logic there.
2) In the documentation, I don't see any way of getting either the elapsed time or the remaining time from AlarmManager once it is running.
So, my question is: does this mean that I will need two timers that I start at the same time? Say, an AlarmManager to wake the phone up and call the activity, and a CountDownTimer contained in the service to hold the remaining time and call the alarm ringtone?
Thanks for helping out my clueless ass.
You could extend AlarmManager. However the common way is to get an instance of it, which is running as a system service.
Get the instance using Context.getSystemService(Context.ALARM_SERVICE) and you will be able to register your PendingIntent to that system service, which is independent to your own app. The PendingIntent can either start an activity or send broadcast with some Intent. You don't monitor the elapsed time constantly in AlarmManager. Rather, you calculate the time difference between the current time of your method call, and the desired time to fire your event. And then you set an alarm in AlarmManager with a PendingIntent representing the action you wish to take at that interval, or a time point.
On the other hand, if you want maximum flexibility, run your service as foreground service and listen for system broadcast like ACTION_TIME_TICK, which is fired every minute. Alternatively if you don't run service in foreground you could also run your service with START_STICKY, which guarantees that your service will be restarted after the system kills it (due to sleep or closing app). Think this as a background service that is constantly running. This provides you a lot of flexibility in your implementation.
I'm new to Android so I want to make sure that the following solution is the correct one.
The problem:
I want to sync the device's local database with a database on my server, via a webservice, every 10 minutes. I already have a web service call that I can make that returns the new/updated records. What I'm wondering is what is the best way to schedule this task. I want the databases to sync even when the application is not running.
My solution (is this the correct route to go?):
I will have one BroadcastReceiver that listens for android.intent.action.BOOT_COMPLETED, in it's onReceive I will create an AlarmManager that sends a message to MyReceiver (via a PendingIntent) every 10 minutes. Also, in my application's startup I will do the same (create an alarm to send messages to the MyReceiver via a PendingIntent) - Since both alarms are sending messages to MyReceiver and their corresponding PendingIntents are initialized with PendingIntent.FLAG_UPDATE_CURRENT will the new alarm override the old one? (this is what I want to do, in case for some reason the alarm gets cancelled after device boot it should be restarted when the application starts).
In MyReceiver's onReceive() I will create a MyIntentService (this instance will make the webservice call and update the local database).
Is this a good solution? Any suggestions?
Thanks
Solution is fine...Actually all the AlarmManager instances get cleared when device turned off and rebooted.
The simple way is that...
First create AlarmManager when application started.
Second in onReceive of BOOT_COMPLETED BroadcastReceiver.
Its enough, PendingIntent.FLAG_UPDATE_CURRENT will make sure of having only one activated alarm at a time.
In this way, alarm registered when your application started. There will be no issue if its already registered via BOOT_COMPLETED. Activated alarm will deactivated when you turn off your device, but BroadcastReceiver to BOOT_COMPLETED will take care of registration new alarm at next boot.
If you decide that this answers your question, please mark it as "accepted". This will raise both your and my reputation score.
Also you need to review your interval to use network, it might be very resource consuming for device and user. One policy might be to have longer period of interval and check for update when user starts your app (this might not be user friendly but can save many system resources and battery power as well). Try to find some better policy according to your needs.
Using FLAG_UPDATE_CURRENT in that manner will override the existing PendingIntent if one exists. I'm not positive but I believe that as soon as you get into onReceive, the PendingIntent is consumed so it's no longer there to be overridden. In either case, it sounds like this is the functionality you are looking for and yes it's a good way to solve this kind of problem. My only other suggestion would be if the 10 minute interval timing is not absolutely critical then use one of the INTERVAL_ schedules (INTERVAL_FIFTEEN_MINUTES for example) in your AlarmManager to help conserve battery life; basically it lets allows all apps that run on intervals to "batch" their work together and wake the device up less frequently.
I see all the examples of AlarmManager being set by an Activity.
My question is this:
If my application sets a recurring AlarmManager, does that persist even after the application that started is is closed and removed from memory?
If not, how do I start an AlarmManager at a lower level that is started by Android at boot up and if it ever fails or dies or throws an exception is restarted without the user having to do anything?
Lastly, if the action I wish for the BroadcastReceiver to undertake has no visual components, do I still have to create a separate Activity for it? In my case I want there to be a background uploader that wakes up and looks into a folder and if it sees files in that folder, sends them off to the server. I don't need any feedback to the user.
So, my ideal would be to have a magical, OS based AlarmManager that calls an IntentService which just handles the uploading, but I'm unclear on how to get such an AlarmManager running in the first place.
TIA
Yes, AFAIK the alarms "survive" and keeps getting triggered, even after the activity that registered them ends. But they don't survive a phone reboot.
If I understands your problem correctly, I think you can achieve what your looking for by creating a project with a broadcast receiver that listens for android.intent.action.BOOT_COMPLETED intents and then (re-)register a repeating alarm, which in turns starts a (Intent)Service to do the uploading.
You don't need an activity, but you probably would want one anyway, to let the user temporarily disable the upload mechanism by checking off a checkbox, or something. It would probably also be nice to let the user choose the frequency of your alarm, i.e. how often the service should be started and look for new files to upload. This would also be a good place to register your alarm for the first time.
I agree with Nicolai that you'd have 2 broadcast receivers in your application :
one that re-register the alarm on boot
one that starts your service when triggered by the alarm
You could still have an activity but it shouldn't be started by the alarm receiver (hence the service) : instead, maybe launch a notification as you start your service, with the user having the possibility to launch the activity from the expanded message of the notification.
maybe also think about setInexactRepeating (instead of setRepeating) for your alarm, as well as using a worker thread to handle the long uploads (in case the user wants to use your activity in the main thread at the same time).
I have a service that will monitor location changes daily. What I know so far that to start a service at boot, I have to follow the linked tutorial. This way I can get the service started at boot, but to save battery I need it only between 9am-9pm.
Question is pretty simple, so I will repeat:
How can I ensure a service is started at 9am and stopped 9pm every day?
Use AlarmManager to set two alarms, each with a PendingIntent that will call startService() on your service, but with distinct action strings ('start', 'stop'). When onStart() of your service detects the 'stop' action Intent, it arranges for an orderly shutdown (e.g., stopSelf()).
This will fail if the user applies a task manager to you in Android 2.1 or earlier, since the technique they tend to use will wipe out your alarms (in addition to killing the service). In that case, the user is presumably voting for your service to not run, so you should try to accommodate the user's wishes.
CommonsWare is right. This is the best way.
You are writing an application and you had better not to change anything out of the application. If you want to add a system service(on boot started service), you need to modify the BSP and add your service to systemserver.java. It's not recommended.CommonsWare's suggestion can do this work.
As you said about the activity, you can start the activicy when you receive the boot broadcast. Then do what your want.....