Under what circumstances would using AIDL to define a service interface be the correct decision (rather than just creating an extension to the service class)?
You need to use AIDL if you want a class outside of your application's process to access the Service. If you're only using the service from inside your application, you can use a local service.
Merely extending a service class will not allow your service to expose its methods to outside entities. If you want your service to be exposed/used by code which runs out of your android app, you will have to define an AIDL for it. This AIDL will be shared and be formed as contract for your service. Refer this http://developer.android.com/guide/components/aidl.html.
1.when to use aidl based service.
A few benefits can be gained by segment part of your code into backend service:
decouple front-end and back-end
memory/cpu intensive processing can be stacked to backend service, GC in service will not affect front-end user experience
service crash will not bring down the whole APP
2.how to create such a service
I have written a good library, you can refer as an example http://github.com/zhchang/hogwarts
AIDL
The Android Interface Definition Language (AIDL) allows developers to define a programming interface that the client and server use to communicate with each other using Inter-Process Communication (IPC).
This article shows how to connect to a running service in Android, and how to retrieve the data from the remote/running service.
Example of IPC mechanism
Let RemoteService be a client service and RemoteServiceClient be an Activity to communicate with the remote service.
One service provides information about the mathematic operations like addition, subtraction, and multiplication for the given two integers. To expose the functionality of what Service can do, create an .aidl file in the project directory.
AIDL Example
Related
I want every app to be able to send data to my service. Therefore I need inter process communication. Every page I can find proposes to use Messenger, AIDL or Intents (BroadcastReceiver). So far what I could figure out by building some test apps is that BroadcastReceiver is extremely slow and messages can get lost without notification if sending with multiple threads inside while(true) loop. AIDL and Messenger are not only complicated to implement (service is needed, binder,...) but can provide strange behavior for example when sending with multiple threads resulting in RemoteException (!!! FAILED BINDER TRANSACTION !!! ) with AIDL just when using oneway keyword. I want to ensure that delivery is guaranteed. Is there even a reason to use oneway when delivery should be guaranteed?
Nevertheless, LocalSocket seems to be extremely easy to use (no need for a service, works just like java socket). Client apps could just open a LocalSocket, connect to the provided address and then while(true) outputstream.writeObject();
Are there any downsides when using LocalSocket because the android developer page says "Some apps attempt to implement IPC using traditional Linux techniques such as network sockets and shared files. We strongly encourage you to instead use Android system functionality for IPC" but does not further comment on this
Are there any downsides when using LocalSocket
There is no security at the framework level for LocalSocket. While you may "want every app to be able to send data to my service", the user may not, which is why standard IPC can be protected by permissions.
startService() and bindService() will cause an instance of your service to be created, even starting a process for you, if needed to handle the request. Your service will not be running all of the time. So, you need startService() or bindService() anyway.
AIDL: Using AIDL is necessary only if you allow clients from different applications to access your service for IPC and want to handle multithreading in your service.
Binder: If you do not need to perform concurrent IPC across different applications, you should create your interface by implementing a Binder.
Messenger: If you want to perform IPC, but do not need to handle multithreading, implement your interface using a Messenger.
I've written a library starting a service in the background. It runs perfectly in all applications.
In order to reduce the RAM usage, I want to avoid running multiple services for different applications. Actually, it's pretty enough to use only one service to get things done.
Firstly, I've written an AIDL file to make IPC between applications/libraries. Defined the service as exported/enabled with signature permission. Since all applications are the exactly the same service, it's not possible to check if any one is up or down. While binding the service to check the condition of the service, it always creates and destroys the own service because of the nature of BIND_AUTO_CREATE flag. That's why not possible to get any kind of info from the exported service if it's really up and running.
Then, I tried to define a Content Provider to the manifest of the library. My aim is to share the service info through it. It's really good mechanism to communicate between exported service and application main process. But it is not usable for multiple instances. Because applications which gets the content provider info from the library use the same authority and so it's not possible to install the second one. It gives an DUPLICATE_PROVIDER_AUTHORITY error.
What's your suggestion about the issue? Is there any option to create a master/slave mechanism? Is it possible to make the service singleton for the application uses the library project?
P.S: Tried broadcast and shared preferences techniques. But they're not effective to listen the callback from the exported service.
You need to put the Service in an APK of its own. It needs to have its own unique package name (in the manifest) which is different from the package names of any of the applications that use it. This is how you make the Service behave as a singleton. Now you can use AIDL and bind to the Service in order to have two-way communication.
Note that in more recent versions of Android, it has become necessary to start a Service using an explicit Intent (ie: the Component must be explicitly specified, you can't use just an ACTION).
Alternative 1:
If the use case permits I think you should not implement the Service.
Make your client implement a service a call your library code. This
is how MediaPlayer and other default android APIs work.
Alternative 2:
Host the service in a separate app..and download the app when the
first call is made from any client. From here onwards there will be
single service handling all the client request.This is how some APIs like adobe
air/ MDM solutions from Airwatch works.
There is no good way you can control a component which is running in other app,unless using broadcast receivers and all.
I have Google source code and want to write one Android Service in lower layer similar to how Android provides for App and Frameworks layer.
Is it possible?
If yes, I want to access this native service in my app though IMyService.Stub.asInterface.
Obviously my that service should be be running in different process and services to be provided by my native service should expose AIDL or something similar.
Of course you can.
First you must define you own protocol, like the message definitions.
Then you implement your server side, register it with service manager, and waiting for the binder calls.
Your client could get the service handle from the service manager and then send binder call to the server.
You can refer to the media_server and mediaplayer source code in AOSP.
to understand the AIDL in android, i want one real life example, means the at what scenario of development we need to use AIDL.
by reading the Android Docs ... It puts me in confusion and so many question, so it is hard to read whole doc for me, can anyone help me
is it for communicating with outside the phone.
or to communicating with different apps, (why we need to communicate with other apps)
what kind of service they are talking in docs
AIDL is used for Binder. Binder is a mechanism to do RPC calls on/from an Android Service.
When to use AIDL? When you need a Service. When do you need a Service? If you want to share data and control something in another application, you need a service using AIDL as an interface. (A Content Provider is used when sharing data only).
Services can be used within your application as the model roll in the MVC-pattern.
AIDL is Android Interface Definition Language. This basically allows you to do IPC calls.
Use: There are situations where one process would need to talk to other to obtain certain information.
Example: Process A needs info of Call status to determine whether it needs to change Call Type (for example Audio to Video Call or Vice-versa). You may get call status from certain listeners but to change Call type from Audio to Video, Process A needs a hook to change. This "Hook" or way of changing calls is typically part of Telephony Classes which are part of Telephony Process. So in order to obtain such an information from Telephony process, One may write a telephony service (which runs as a part of android telephony process), which will allow you to query or change call type. Since Process A(Client) here is using this remote Service which communicates with Telephony process to alter call type, it needs to have an interface to talk to service. Since Telephony service is the provider, and Process A (client) is the user, they both need to agree on an interface (protocol) they can understand and adhere to. Such an interface is AIDL, which allows you to talk (via a remote service) to Telephony process and get some work done.
Simply put in laymen terms, AIDL is an "agreement" Client gets, which tells it about how to talk to service. Service itself will have a copy of that agreement(since it published for it's clients). Service will then implement details on how it handles once a request arrives or say when someone is talking to it
So process A requests to change call via Service, Service gets the request, it talks to telephony process(since it's part of it) and changes call to video.
An important point to note is, AIDL is only necessary for multithreading environment. You could do away with Binders if you don't need to deal with multithreaded arch.
Another real world example is Google Play License is using AIDL.
I have the same thinking about an example of AIDL, it's very difficult to find an idea to make an example app which uses AIDL. Then I have an idea about it create a LocalLogServerApp. Maybe it can not become a production app but it still shows some value in using AIDL
The main function of this app is
Receive the local log from other local apps (another app need to implement AIDL to send log)
Save the log to datastore
Display the logs
Maybe do something with the local log (eg: search, delete)
Maybe notify developer when error log happened
The benefit of this app
The local log can use when you have some very strange issues which sometimes happened in a few moments and in some specific device. In this case, common Log won't help, debug won't help, Firebase Log may help but Firebase receive log from multiple device.
Reusable, many apps can use it with less code
Hope you find this idea helpful to find another better AIDL example
https://github.com/PhanVanLinh/AndroidLocalLogServer
https://github.com/PhanVanLinh/AndroidLocalLogClientTest
1 - is it for communicating with outside the phone.
Its communicating with outside the app.
2 - or to communicating with different apps, (why we need to communicate with other apps)
As #GodOnScooter mentioned, when your app communicates with telephony service which is actually an other part.
3 - what kind of service they are talking in docs?
This is a service which runs in different process of a system, To bind to this service you need IPC(inter process communication), AIDL is used to implement this.
I have a service which is is responsible to send requests and take responses over network. I am planning to use it also as an API . So other applications on device can bind to it, send requests and take responses.
1-Is this a proper way to provide an API to other apps?
2-Should I use a Messenger or AIDL ? Messenger seems simpler, but network operation can block a request, so using a single queue for requests can be problematic !
3-Is it a good idea to use same service for both network operations and as an API for other apps ? I can create a separate service for API which binds to network service, but this will bring extra message overhead and code complexity !
According to me you need to create a service separately that can be used by both of your applications. And you need to use BroadcastReceiver to start your service as and when android system boots. So that any of your application can use that service.
Creating a simple service is the best idea. You need AIDL for that so that you can transfer the data between service and application with ease.