Pro Android 3

Chapter 5. Understanding Intents

Android introduced a concept called intents to invoke components. The list of components in Android include activities (UI components), services (background code), broadcast receivers (code that responds to broadcast messages), and content providers (code that abstracts data).

Basics of Android Intents

Although an intent is easily understood as a mechanism to invoke components, Android folds multiple ideas into the concept of an intent. You can use intents to invoke external applications from your application. You can use intents to invoke internal or external components from your application. You can use intents to raise events so that others can respond in a manner similar to a publish-and-subscribe model. You ...