Professional Android™ 2 Application Development

Chapter 5. Intents, Broadcast Receivers, Adapters, and the Internet

WHAT'S IN THIS CHAPTER?

• An introduction to Intents

• Starting new Activities and sub-Activities using implicit and explicit Intents

• Intent filters and intent resolution

• Using linkify

• Intents, broadcast actions and Broadcast Receivers

• Using Adapters to bind data to Views

• Using the Internet in Android

• How to create and use Dialogs

At first glance the subjects of this chapter might appear to have little in common; in practice they represent the glue that binds applications and their components.

Mobile applications on most platforms run in their own sandboxes. They're isolated from each other, and have strict limitations applied to their interaction with hardware and native components. Android applications are also sandboxed but they can use Intents, Broadcast Receivers, Adapters, Content Providers, and the Internet to interact through those boundaries.

In this chapter you'll look at Intents. Intents are probably the most unique, and important, concept in Android development. You'll learn how to use Intents to broadcast data between applications and application components, and start Activities or Services, both explicitly and using late runtime binding.

Using implicit Intents you'll learn how to request that an action be performed on a piece of data, letting Android determine which application components can best service that request.

Broadcast Intents are used to announce events system-wide. You'll learn how to transmit these broadcasts, ...