Question

Hi I’m writing a application for android that is started from boot up and i wondered if there was a way of telling the application it was started from the boot up of the device? i need it to do something different if the application was manual started (i.e not when the device was started). i am using a BroadcastReceiver to start the application when the device starts.

Answer 1

You could either make two different broadcast receivers one that has ACTION_BOOT_COMPLETED for the intent filter, and another that has the other intent filter that you would use.

Or create one broadcastreceiver that has two intent filters like:

<receiver android:name=".BatteryReceiver">
        <intent-filter>
            <action android:name="android.intent.action.BOOT_COMPLETED"/>                               
        </intent-filter> 
        <intent-filter>
            <action android:name="SOMETHING_ELSE"/>                               
        </intent-filter>         
    </receiver>

and then in the onReceiver do:

if (intent.getAction().equals(Intent.ACTION_BOOT_COMPLETED)){
  // do code for phone just powered on
} else {
  // do code for phone is already on
}

EDIT:
The above assumes that you use the BroadcastReceiver under two circumstances, which may not be the case judging from your question.

So if you are starting an Activity (or service), then in the BroadcastReceiver code, you could do:

Intent i = new Intent(context, MyClass.class);
i.putExtra("STARTED_FROM_BOOT", true);
i.setFlags(Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK);
context.startActivity(i);

Then in the activity, you could do:

if (getIntent().hasExtra("STARTED_FROM_BOOT")){
   // do your code for when started from boot.
}

Let me know if I need to add anything.