Question

Hi I have an Activity 1 which needs to send data to Appwidget (widget) which has a text view.

For sending data between activites i know that we can use intent.putExtra("mydata", dataString); and recive the same with String data = bundle.getString("mydata"); But in my case i need to send data (String) to app Widget.

When i use

Bundle dataFromPrevious = getIntent().getExtras();
String newString = dataFromPrevious.getString("mydata");

inside AppWidgetProvider it throws an error in getIntent saying getIntent is undefined for the type Class.

How can i get the string inside this AppWidget? Also this text will be updated from activity 1 with new string often so is using SharedPrefrences a good choice for this situation? Is there any other way?

UPDATE 1:

As mentioned by Joseph, i have added
<action android:name="android.appwidget.action.APPWIDGET_UPDATE" />
in my manifest,

Now i have also created an OnRecieve Override in AppWidget

@Override
    public void onReceive(Context context, Intent intent) {

        Bundle getPrevData = intent.getExtras();
        String data = getPrevData.getString("mydata");
        newdata = data;
        super.onReceive(context, intent);
    }

In my On Update i have

views.setTextViewText(R.id.dataWidget,newdata);

Here the newdata is the public static String But it dose not display anything!!! when i setTextViewText to a textview in the widget. Am i missing something here? Please help…

UPDATE 2:

import android.appwidget.AppWidgetManager;
import android.appwidget.AppWidgetProvider;
import android.content.Context;
import android.content.Intent;
import android.os.Bundle;
import android.widget.RemoteViews;
import android.widget.Toast;

public class MainWidget extends AppWidgetProvider {

    private RemoteViews views;
    public static String newdata

    @Override
    public void onReceive(Context context, Intent intent) {

        Bundle getPrevData = intent.getExtras();
        String data = getPrevData.getString("mydata");
        newdata = data;

        super.onReceive(context, intent);
    }

    @Override
    public void onUpdate(Context context, AppWidgetManager appWidgetManager, int[] appWidgetIds) {

        views = new RemoteViews(context.getPackageName(),R.layout.widget_layout);
        appWidgetManager.updateAppWidget(appWidgetIds, views);

        //views.setTextViewText(R.id.dataWidget,newdata);

        super.onUpdate(context, appWidgetManager, appWidgetIds);
    }


}

And this is my Another activityvthat sends data:

final String text = ((TextView)findViewById(R.id.textview)).getText().toString();
Intent intent = new Intent(FirstActivity.this, MainWidget.class);
                intent.putExtra("mydata", text);

Answer 1

You can update the data in widget without using Broadcast receiver.

1. Save data in sharedPreference.

2. Create the remote views using new data and use AppWidgetManager.updateWidget to update the widget.

Here is the sample code.

RemoteViews updateViews = buildUpdate(context); // Update the view using the new data.
ComponentName thisWidget = new ComponentName(context, WidgetClassName.class);
AppWidgetManager manager = AppWidgetManager.getInstance(context);
manager.updateAppWidget(thisWidget, updateViews);

This is what i did in my previous application.

Saneesh CS