Question

I am implementing a music player. The notifications allow the user to pause or skip a song.
I use

Intent i = new Intent("com.package.app");
mExpandedView.setOnClickPendingIntent(R.id.next_song, PendingIntent.getBroadcast(this, 0, i, 0));

In order to transmit this click to the MusicService that hosts the MediaPlayer and all the associated methods. I would like to directly call a method part of this service (playNextSong() for example) but getService() seems to only allow me to launch a new service, not to call a method in the service, or get some data. I don’t even need to launch the service, since the music is playing, it is already running.

So is there a way to do this that I am not aware of ?, or is :
Notification broadcasts to BroadcastReceiver, then BroadcastReceiver broadcasts to the service the recommended way do accomplish this action ?
It looks like a convoluted way to do something simple…

Answer 1

Create PendingIntent for notification as broadcast message, custom one (use your own string like com.my.custom.broadcast.message.action). Create and register in AndroidManifest new broadcast receiver that will be fired by this custom action. OnReceive method of the Broadcast receiver, start your service with custom arguments/action or whatever, based on class of Service and context arguments passed into onReceive method.

Probably you can try to directly start service by creating PendingIntent for that, but I think it is better do it through middle-step: BroadcastReceiver