Question

Hi I’ve been having an issue with Broadcast Receivers and passing information to another activity. I’m trying to create an application that will capture incoming SMS messages, look for a website in the text, then pop up an Alert Dialog box asking if the user wants to go to the website.

public class TextReceiver extends BroadcastReceiver{

public void onReceive(Context context, Intent intent)
{
    // .. other code that
    // sets received SMS into message

    Toast toast = Toast.makeText(context,
            "Received Text: " + message.getMessageBody(), Toast.LENGTH_LONG);
            toast.show();
 }

So that code works fine, receive a text it pops up a toast with the message. The toast is useless but it shows the receiver works. But I want to communicate with an activity to show an Alert Dialog and start up a webView. I already programmed the code that will take a string search for the website and open the webView. Is it possible to get the string from the broadcast receiver and do something like this?:

    public class ReceiveText extends Activity{
public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {

// Somehow pass the string from the receiver into this activity, 
//stored in variable messages

findOpen(messages);

// is that possible?

}
public class findOpen(string messages){
// do stuff ... open alert...open site if OK
}

So basically I just want to pass a string from a Broadcast Receiver to another activity that will use that string. The rest of the code is basically in place all I need is that string… I’m new to this and Java and any help would be much appreciated. Thanks

Answer 1

If you have your activity named ReceiveText, then in your BroadcastReceiver, you should do the following:

Intent i = new Intent(context, ReceiveText.class);
i.addFlags(Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK);
i.putExtra("message", message.getMessageBody());
context.startActivity(i);

Then, in your activity, you will need to getExtra as so:

Intent intent = getIntent();
String message = intent.getStringExtra("message");

And then you will use message as you need.

If you simply want the ReceiveText activity to show the message as a dialog, declare <activity android:theme="@android:style/Theme.Dialog" /> in your manifest for ReceiveText and then set the message to a textview in the activity.

EDIT: This restarts your activity. this answer is likely a better solution for most people.