August 2015
Beginner
768 pages
18h 18m
English
Content preview from Android Application Development All-in-One For Dummies, 2nd Edition
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Chapter 3
Services
In This Chapter
Running code without bothering the user
Running code when a device starts
Starting, binding, and querying
Sending messages from one process to another
Some things are of no concern to the user of an Android device. Imagine seeing a pop-up message saying, “A process on your phone is checking for email right now,” followed immediately by the message, “Nope, no new email. Sorry about the interruption. Get back to what you were doing. You’ll hear from me again in exactly one minute.” One of my phones actually did this! Such notices are intrusive and unnecessary, especially on a device with limited screen real estate.
To do something behind the scenes, you don’t want an Android activity. An activity normally has a layout file, and the user deals with the layout’s gizmos on the screen. Instead, you want the kind of component that runs quietly in the background. In other words, you want an Android service.
A Very Simple Service
I start this chapter with an embarrassingly simple example — a service that doesn’t do anything. This lazy service simply illustrates ...
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O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.Amir M.
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.