Android Service never appears to start - onStartCommand() not called - android

I am trying to create a service that will handle file I/O in the background. Activities that update the data will bind to the service and call the service's methods to perform the I/O. I am using the Android documentation for guidance.
My service does not seem to want to start, however. In the onCreate() method of my Activity, I have:
Intent smsIntent = new Intent(this, SurveyManagerService.class);
String surveyFilename = getIntent().getStringExtra("surveyFilename");
System.out.println(startService(smsIntent)); //testing if it starts
SurveyManagerServiceConnection connection = new SurveyManagerServiceConnection();
sms = connection.getSurveyManagerService();
At line 3 LogCat outputs a ComponentInfo object, so it would appear that the service is created; however, sms is null. Furthermore, the SurveyManagerService onStartCommand() method never seems to be called:
#Override
public int onStartCommand(Intent intent, int flags, int startId)
{
System.out.println("starting service");
Toast.makeText(this, "service starting", Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show();
openSurveyFromIntent(intent);
return START_REDELIVER_INTENT;
}
I never see any "starting service" output in LogCat, nor does the Toast appear.
My service is declared in my manifest as:
<service android:name=".SurveyManagerService" android:exported="false" android:enabled="true">
</service>
Am I missing something obvious? Let me know what other information I should provide to diagnose the problem.

Be sure to declare your service in AndroidManifest.xml
<application>
...
<service android:name=".path.to.service.MyService"/>
</application>

Maybe you've accidentally placed the service tag outside application tag? Then the service just fails silently. Although there should be a "Unable to start service Intent..." error in the log.

It seems the onCreate() method has to exit before the service can actually start. Once I removed the getSurveyManagerService() request, and once a bit of time had passed, I received the System.out messages indicating the service was starting.
Unfortunately that creates another problem: the Activity relies on the Service for its data, so I need to determine how to cause the Activity to wait for the service to start.
EDIT: My solution was to create a private subclass of my ServiceConnection in my Activity. I then overrode the onServiceConnected() method to provide the Activity with its data (populating a ListView, in this case).

In my case i refactored the service class & noticed that it was not automatically refactored in manifest. So i had to manually update the fully qualified name of the service in manifest.

Related

OnTaskRemoved in Android O

In my android app, I have a Service that starts when the app goes in background. OnStartCommand begins long running task that analyzes and checks device and app status.
Now, I am preparing the app for Android O. First issue that i faced is Services, I rework them to JobServices.
Now I am facing another issue. When user removes my app from application stack JobService.OnTaskRemoved doesn't get called.
Before, when I used Service calling of Service.OnTaskRemoved worked fine for me.
Now I see only way. I need My old Service for handlingService.OnTaskRemoved and new JobServices for executing task.
Am I wrong? May be some one can give me good advice?
You are implementing the wrong concepts.., which creates problem.., To tackle it .. you are again implementing wrong things.. Please offload all...
In my android app, I have a Service that starts when the app goes in background..
The Problem ;
In android O there is no background execution allowed at all.. Even a single line of code is not guaranteed to execute..!!
And you want it to execute long running service..!!
The Solution;
The same service can be started whenever App is opened first time... On acquiring all runtime permissions. As :
if (Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= Build.VERSION_CODES.O)
{
context.startForegroundService(new Intent(context, YourLongRunningService.class));
}
else
{
context.startService(new Intent(context, YourLongRunningService.class));
}
OnStartCommand begins long running task that analyzes and checks device and app status.
The Problem ;
OnStartCommand is not meant to be coded the long running procedures / statements of code..
Nor it is meant to be coded at all........
The Solution;
#Override
public int onStartCommand(Intent intent, int flags, int startId)
{
Log.d("RUNNER : ", "\nPERFORMING....");
return START_STICKY;
}
Above single line tells android to keep alive ALL THE TIME UNTIL DEVELOPER STOPS IT ON HIS OWN VIA CODE STOPSELF Even removed from background or from recents; It gets re-created automatically by android os
Then where should i write the code.... ??
Wait... its too early to code yet....!!! patience
begins long running task that analyzes and checks device and app status
Your question is un clear and in my brain there is a gradle error ... I can not resolve your symbols :
analyzes
checks device
app status
But i know that these your broadcasts definitely .. And you need to implement broadcast-receivers... to receive it...!!
I will implement Broadcast receivers... Its too easy...
The Problem ;
Wait... Android O do not allows you to implement many broadcast receivers from static receivers like we does... And even we are not allowed to call that receivers on specific intent-actions from manifest.xml
The Solution;
Implement runtime receivers in your above created service YourLongRunningService in onCreate like :
IntentFilter myFilter = new IntentFilter();
myFilter.addAction("android.net.conn.CONNECTIVITY_CHANGE");
this.registerReceiver(mCallBroadcastReceiver, CallFilter);
CONNECTIVITY_CHANGE is an example and it would be your intent action / broadcast you want to listen for...!!
What is mCallBroadcastReceiver and all...
These are runtime registration of receivers... and needed to be unregistered from onDestroy like :
#Override
public void onDestroy()
{
this.unregisterReceiver(mCallBroadcastReceiver);
super.onDestroy();
}
No.... No... No.... I do not want to un-register it... I want it always working..
Our service is START_STICKY Even if it is destroyed; gets started automatically and registers mCallBroadcastReceiver in onCreate again..
Where is the receiver then....???
In this case mCallBroadcastReceiver is receiver defined in class area where we declares the variables and constants :
public class YourLongRunningService extends Service
{
NotificationManager mNotifyManager;
NotificationCompat.Builder mBuilder;
NotificationChannel notificationChannel;
String NOTIFICATION_CHANNEL_ID = "1";
private BroadcastReceiver mCallBroadcastReceiver = new BroadcastReceiver()
{
#Override
public void onReceive(Context context, Intent intent)
{
// All your receiver code goes here...
}
};
// your constructor
// your onStartcommand
// your ondestroy
}
What notification Manager is doing here....???
In and above O you can not run foreground service without proper Ongoing task notification... It will go in your onCreate which will call Startforeground with the notification to start this service as a foreground service
What below android O...?
It works below Android O too... Just call with normal startservice its code it given on very start...!!
Where is my long running code goes then....???
From receiver receive broadcast you want and start a intentservice or a job or a alarm class or whatever you want...
I will make a simple class which takes context in constructor and defines a public method named LongRunningCode may be of one crore lines of code....
And on receiving broadcast in receiver , I will make a object of that class by passing context of receiver and will simply call LongRunningCode method with that object
Hope it helps

stopService() doesn't call onDestroy [duplicate]

I have big problems with stopping a service, which plays audio file. I want to stop the current service before I play another file.
Activity:
public void playTrack(View view){
Intent i=new Intent(this,playService.class);
i.setAction("com.c0dehunterstudios.relaxer.PLAY");
if(isPlaying){
stopService(i);
isPlaying=false;
Log.v("ACTIVITY", "Stopping..");
}
startService(i);
isPlaying=true;
}
Service:
#Override
public void OnDestroy(){
Log.v("SERVICE","Service killed");
player.stop();
super.onDestroy();
}
But sadly it doesn't work - actually it doesn't even come down to the "Service killed" inside OnDestroy().
What am I doing wrong?
First, it's onDestroy, not OnDestroy . Second, you must use the #Override annotation for compile-time checking, so your Service code should look somewhat like this:
#Override
public void onDestroy(){
Log.v("SERVICE","Service killed");
player.stop();
super.onDestroy();
}
First, you need to clarify how many types of services in Android. AFAIK, there are:
Foreground service.
Background service.
Bound service.
Intent service.
These services stop in different ways.
Foreground: only stop when you intentionally stop it by calling stopService() in activity or fragment where you start that service or call stopSelf() in its own service. And Please note only these methods trigger service's onDestroy().
Background: stopService() and stopSelf() do in the same way as foreground. Moreover, you should know this service is in the same thread with activity or fragment calling it, so if you destroy activity or fragment, this service will stop also, but without calling onDestroy(). It basically destroys underground. Thus, if you want to catch when this service stops you need to add android:stopWithTask="false" when declaring service in Manifest file like this:
<application>
//....
<service android:name=".services.catchingStopService"
android:stopWithTask="false" />
//....
</application>
And now in your service class, you can override this method which triggers whenever this service stops:
#Override
public void onTaskRemoved(Intent rootIntent) {
super.onTaskRemoved(rootIntent);
// Your job when the service stops.
}
Bound: you need to handle by your self by bindService() and unbindService(), you will find out it's totally the same as starService() and stopService()
Intent: this type of service stops by itself when it finishes its jobs. And you can use ResultReceiver to communicate between service and activity or fragment. It's similar to BroadcastReceiver. You can search for example on Google easily.
Summary: base on your purpose, pick the type of service satisfying you. And they all agree with:
Don't count on onDestroy() to know when service stops because it
sometimes gets called underground; more accurately, onDestroy calls
when stopService() or stopSelf() calls (BoundService works in the
same way, I think, but by a similar method, maybe unBind(), I did not
test yet).
Use attribute android:stopWithTask="false", instead to know when the
service really stops.
All types of service stop when the device shutdown or OS kills it if
device leaks of memory.
You also should have a look at flag return by onStartCommand() to
be able to deal with when services stop like restart service again or
something. Here are some keyword you can search:
START_STICKY
<action android:name="android.intent.action.BOOT_COMPLETED" />
<action android:name="android.intent.action.ACTION_SHUTDOWN" />
<actionandroid:name="android.intent.action.QUICKBOOT_POWEROFF" />
I had a similar problem even with onDestroy correctly set up - the answer for which could be useful for people coming to this page. For me, onDestroy was not called immediately during stopService, sometimes for a very long time - leaving the service doing work when it should have stopped.
The answer is that this is expected behaviour - I can guess but don't exactly know why. So my solution in this case was to create a public static method to stop the actions of the service manually, which happens at the time it's called, then stopService() will call onDestroy in it's own good time...
In the case for this example (which is probably long gone, I would probably decide to keep the service running until it's expected to quite the app, but provide ways to change audio file, while the service is still active.
In my case I was printing a log inside the onDestroy and It was not printing the log and I thought onDestroy not calling when I call stopService. but in Android studio many times does not print the log so you can once double check or verify with the debug or toast.

How to deal with a loop Service?

My Android application is activating a service that call an 'Activity.
On mainActivity:
startService(new Intent(getBaseContext(),MyService.class));
And then on service:
public int onStartCommand(Intent intent,int flage,int startId){
// Toast.makeText(this, "Yes please", Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show();
Intent mIntent=new Intent(MyService.this,trackingActivity.class);
mIntent.setFlags(Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK);
startActivity(mIntent);
return START_STICKY; }
At the end of trackingActivity this line is written (Again):
startService(new Intent(getBaseContext(),MyService.class));
That's creates a lot of Services. Is there a better way to create a background service that repeats itself always without creating each time a new Service ?
I tried to do a while loop inside the Activity :
while(true){
Actions on activity
}
But with no success.
Context.startService(Intent) does not create a new Service for each call.
If there is already a matching service running, it passes the intent to that running service, but does not create a new one each time.
See the Android Developer Docs for Context.startService(Intent):
If this service is not already running, it will be instantiated and
started (creating a process for it if needed); if it is running then
it remains running.
Every call to this method will result in a corresponding call to the target service's onStartCommand(Intent, int, int) method, with the intent given here.
There is similar information in the Android Developer Docs about Starting a Service:
[When starting a service using an intent] the startService() method returns immediately and the Android system
calls the service's onStartCommand() method. If the service is not
already running, the system first calls onCreate(), then calls
onStartCommand().
...
Multiple requests to start the service result in multiple
corresponding calls to the service's onStartCommand(). However, only
one request to stop the service (with stopSelf() or stopService()) is
required to stop it.

IntentService not firing

My application synchronizes data with a remote database via web service calls. I make these calls in an IntentService so they can run in the background (I call it SyncService).
The code to launch my IntentService looks like so:
Intent intent = new Intent();
intent.setClass(appContext, SyncService.class);
// place additional values in intent
intent.putExtra("data_type", SyncService.ITEM_TRACKING);
intent.putExtra("user_id", intUserId);
// call SyncService
appContext.startService(intent);
This, normally, looks great. However, one of my friends, who is also a user of my app, often tells me his data doesn't sync and get displayed on our website. His device happened to be displaying the symptoms while I was around. I plugged his device into my computer and here is what I found:
The code to launch SyncService (ie: the code above) was hit.
I had a breakpoint inside the onHandleIntent method of my IntentService and it never gets hit.
I checked his device's list of running services and SyncService was there and running. Interestingly, it had been running for about 20 minutes. I was under the impression that IntentService killed itself when it was all out of Intents to process.
I force stopped the SyncService (not the app) and, all of the sudden, onHandleIntent started getting hit over and over. It was like all the Intents were queued up somewhere on the device and were just now getting thrown at the SyncService.
Does anyone have any ideas as to what may be the problem? Do you think it's an issue with my app? With Android?
Again, I am handing a message to Android saying, "Start this IntentService or send the message to the already running IntentService." At that point, I have no control. The message never gets to the IntentService. Once I force quit the app, the messages get sent to the IntentService and it does its job.
UPDATE: I think this code is fine, but I'll put it up since a lot of you may want to see it.
Every Intent that comes in to the IntentService has an Extra denoting what "type" of call is to me made (ie: do I call this web service or that web service, etc). When an Intent comes in to the IntentService, I check the "type" and, if there is already an Intent in the queue for that type, I add an Extra to it called "skip" so, when it is reached, I don't execute the search (basically the IntentService can build up lots of Intents and it makes no sense to call this web service when this webservice was called 20 seconds ago). It basically protects the app from spamming the website.
It is important to note that none of this code is hit anyway (once the problem starts occurring). onStartCommand does not get called until the app is killed
#Override
public int onStartCommand (Intent intent, int flags, int startId) {
// here be dragons
// overriding this method and adding your own code is dangerous. i've wrapped
// my code in a try/catch because it is essential that the super method be called
// every time this method is entered. any errors in my code should not prevent this
// or the app will explode.
try {
if (flags == 0 && intent != null && intent.hasExtra("data_type")) {
Integer intDataType = intent.getExtras().getInt("data_type");
if (!mCurrentTypes.containsKey(intDataType)
|| !mCurrentTypes.get(intDataType)) {
mCurrentTypes.put(intDataType, true); // put this type in the list and move on
}
else {
intent.putExtra("skip", true); // mark this Intent to be skipped
}
}
}
catch (Exception e) {
// Log.e("Error onStartCommand", "error: " + e);
}
return super.onStartCommand(intent, flags, startId);
}
private void processIntent(Intent intent) {
// do stuff if no "skip" Extra
mCurrentTypes.put(intDataType, false);
}
There is definitly something that keeps your service running on your friend's device. If so all subsequent call to this intent service are queued until the current one finishes. If it doesn't finish then you will get what you have : next services won't start.
You should double check that :
you give proper timeouts to nework operations
you give proper timeouts to nework connections operations
there is no race condition between threads.
you log any exception that can occur inside the service, you don't wanna loose that kind of information.
Afterwards, if you think everything is green : just log what the service does and use some bug reporting mechanism to get it automatically sent from your friends device. A simple solution could be to use bugsense or equivalent.
Next, put in place some kind of watchdog : a thread that will go on running until your service stops (you just tell your thread to stop when service is stopped). The thread will have to stop your service after some time limit has been passed.
This watchdog thread could be put inside the service itself, or outside, although this may be more complex to put in place.
This answer suggests a solution that worked for me in similar situations. It doesn't fix your current code but suggests another, perhaps simpler (and easier to debug) option:
Add a BroadcastReceiver to your calling Activity that listens for SUCCESS Intents from the IntentService.
In your calling Activity, include the logic for when to start the IntentService (and don't include it in the IntentService). The logic is:
Call startService() and set a flag in the calling Activity to CANNOT_CALL.
If the Activity's BroadcastReceiver has not received a SUCCESS broadcast from the IntentService, then startService() can not be called again.
When the Activity does receive a SUCCESS intent, set the flag to CAN_CALL, and startService() can be called when the timer hits again.
In your IntentService, write your onStartCommand() like so:
#Override
public int onStartCommand(Intent intent, int flags, int startId) {
super.onStartCommand(intent, flags, startId);
return START_STICKY;
}
In you IntentService, when you've received, parsed and stores the web service response, call sendBroadcast() with an Intent with custom action SUCCESS.
This logic is just an outline and has to be fine-tuned for error messages from the web service that have to be broadcast from IntentService to the listening Activity.
Hope this helps.
It seems to me that setting a set of flags to your Intent may solve the problem.
Intent intent = new Intent();
intent.setClass(appContext, SyncService.class);
// This way
intent.setFlags(Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_MULTIPLE_TASK|Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK|Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_EXCLUDE_FROM_RECENTS);
You can make your Service start as fresh using the above flag in a fresh task.
One more comment. It's not an answer for your question. However, it may affect overall behavior of a service.
You do following:
return super.onStartCommand(intent, flags, startId);
Internally Service.onStartCommand() looks like following
public int onStartCommand(Intent intent, int flags, int startId) {
onStart(intent, startId);
return mStartCompatibility ? START_STICKY_COMPATIBILITY : START_STICKY;
}
mStartCompatibility is false if your app target SDK API 7 or later (which is most likely a case).
So, as result your service will be started as START_STICKY.
Here is piece from documentation:
For started services, there are two additional major modes of operation they can decide to run in, depending on the value they return from onStartCommand(): START_STICKY is used for services that are explicitly started and stopped as needed, while START_NOT_STICKY or START_REDELIVER_INTENT are used for services that should only remain running while processing any commands sent to them. See the linked documentation for more detail on the semantics.
Base on what you have described, I recommend to replace "return super.onStartCommand(intent, flags, startId);" to "return START_NOT_STICKY;"

onServiceConnected never called after bindService method

I have a particular situation:
a service started by a broadcast receiver starts an activity. I want to make it possible for this activity to communicate back to the service. I have chosen to use AIDL to make it possible. Everything seems works good except for bindService() method called in onCreate() of the activity. bindService(), in fact, throws a null pointer exception because onServiceConnected() is never called while onBind() method of the service is. Anyway bindService() returns true.
The service is obviously active because it starts the activity.
I know that calling an activity from a service could sound strange, but unfortunately this is the only way to have speech recognition in a service.
Thanks in advance
I've just experienced another version of this problem, with the same symptom of onServiceConnected(...) not being called. The cause was different in my case.
You must make sure to have a service declaration in your AndroidManifest.xml within the application tag - this was the root of the problem for me.
<application android:name=".YourAppTitle" android:icon="#drawable/icon" android:label="#string/app_name">
<activity android:name=".Main" android:label="#string/app_name">
</activity>
<service android:name="YourService" />
</application>
There's an extra complication if you're using a separate Android library within Eclipse - adding this Service tag only seems to fix the issue if the referenced service is in the same package as the manifest; i.e. if your app is in package a.b.c and this is where AndroidManifest.xml resides, then 'YourService' must also be in package a.b.c. (manually copied from another library, if necessary) or else the <service..> tag may/will be ignored and onServiceConnected(...) still won't be called.
This was the case for my project even though I used a suitable import statement for the Service in my code. Eclipse showed no error, so the import was correctly identifying the class from another library in the Eclipse workspace.
HTH
After hours and hours of trying to figure this out, the issue is that the examples that show the creation of the service, don't include the onBind method or they have the following sample code or it generates this for you:
public IBinder onBind(Intent intent) {
// TODO Auto-generated method stub
return null;
}
This causes the onServiceConnected method to fail or never actually get executed. The fix is VERY simple, which is the following:
public IBinder onBind(Intent intent) {
return mBinder;
}
Where you could create a simple binder such as the following to return:
private final IBinder mBinder = new LocalBinder();
public class LocalBinder extends Binder {
public ConferenceService getService() {
return ConferenceService.this;
}
}
The onServiceConnected event was never being called in my application.
The problem was that I had the service name defined in my Application Manifest as:
<service android:name="MyService" android:enabled="true"></service>
Once I changed it to the full class name it worked:
<service android:name="com.example.MyService" android:enabled="true"></service>
Update: You can also have use a relative class name:
<service android:name=".MyService" android:enabled="true"></service>
Specify the class name using its full com.example.MyServiceClass instead of just MyServiceClass.
I can't make up the exact problem out of your description, so I'm going to guess here!
How can bindService() throw a NullPointerException? The only way this could (/should) happen is when you don't supply a Service or a ServiceConnection listener.
bindService() can't throw a NullPointerException because onServiceConnected() isn't called. The call to onServiceConnected() is a product of bindService().
So I guess you are calling a AIDL method, before the Service has actually bonded?
One more thing is that if you are calling bindservice method inside the oncreate method then the onserviceconnected is called after the oncreate method is finished.
So any references to the interface functions before the oncreate ends (or before onserviceconnected is called) shows null pointer exception.
Yet another cause to the original question might be that the service isn't already running and you are passing 0 as flag to bindService. Like so:
bindService(intent, serviceConnection, 0);
When what you are looking for would be:
bindService(intent, serviceConnection, Context.BIND_AUTO_CREATE);
If someone's still looking for the answer after trying all others then this might help..
onServiceConnected() is not called immediately after bindService(...). it takes few seconds. So if you are receiving some value from the onServiceConnected() and you have to use it somewhere else in onCreate or onStart it will throw a NullPointerException because of the delay. So if you can shift that line of code which needs the value from onCreate or onStart, inside onServiceConnected(){......}, below the line of declaration of the value that you need then it might work.
There can be another explanation, not a very frequent situation, but I managed to get into it and lose 2 hours to solve it.
So what I did was that I wanted to reuse the bundle from the intent received by the onBind method. But I went for the lazy version and changed the class of the intent. Apparently this causes the onServiceConnected not to get called. Probably because the system keeps a reference to the intent and uses it when calling onServiceConnected.
In conclusion don't change the intent you receive in onBind.
I also encountered the same problem. And minutes later I found that my code had absolutely no problem. It was the manifest file that had the issue.
Earlier I was declaring the service with its name only.
<service android:name=".MyBoundService"/>
Change it to the full name with the package name
<service android:name="com.pb.servicedemo.MyBoundService"/>
This way you will be able to see your service bound to the activity.
I was calling bind with an empty Intent - getContext().bindService(new Intent(), mConnection, Context.BIND_AUTO_CREATE). I have to make the intent more specific to indicate which service I want to bind to. This is obviously a code error, but the Logcat output was unfortunately not clear enough.
You Must Wait To Complete onCreate() method.
Example: Set Your Buy Service in Buttom:
Button button_useservice=findViewById(R.id.button_useservice);
button_useservice.setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener() {
#Override
public void onClick(View v) {
UsinService();
}
});
I just spent a lot of time on this one, and since in my case it was neither of the above answers I'll just lay out another possible scenario:
This happened to me when I was using a kotlin.coroutines.Deferred object to represent my bound service, and I blocked the thread that onServiceConnected should be called on when I called await() on this object.
So basically - don't block the main thread waiting for onServiceConnected to be called, or it won't be able to be called...

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