Question

I am not certain how to resolve this, but in one Activity I call startService, and then immediately call to start the next Activity.

This works, the service starts, and begins to process the data as expected.

I go to the next Activity, and in onResume I call the AsyncTask to bind the service.

So, the basic flow is that I call the AsyncTask, the bindService returns false, so mConnection is never called.

So, the problem is why is bindService returning false?

The reason I put the binding in an AsyncTask is that I had the thread sleep for 10 seconds before binding to see if the service needed to start up first.

I also started the service inside this activity, first, in the onCreate method, and so waited 10 seconds, but bindService still returns false.

private class BindServiceTask extends AsyncTask<Void, Void, Boolean> {
    protected Boolean doInBackground(Void... params) {
        return bindService(
                new Intent(IMyCallback.class.getName()),
                mConnection, Context.BIND_AUTO_CREATE);
    }
    protected void onPostExecute(Boolean b) {
        if (b) {
            Log.i(TAG, "onResume - binding succeeded");
            Toast.makeText(mContext, "Bound to service succeeded",
                    Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show();
        } else {
            Log.i(TAG, "onResume - binding failed");
            Toast.makeText(mContext, "Bound to service failed",
                    Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show();
        }
    }
}
private IMyCallback mCallback = new IMyCallback.Stub() {
    @Override
    public void dataChanged(double[] info) throws RemoteException {
        mHandler.sendMessage(mHandler.obtainMessage(LOCATION_MSG, info));
    }
};
IMyService mIRemoteService;
private ServiceConnection mConnection = new ServiceConnection() {
    public void onServiceConnected(ComponentName className, IBinder service) {
        Log.i(TAG, "onServiceConnected");
        mIRemoteService = IMyService.Stub.asInterface(service);
        try {
            Log.i(TAG, "registering callback");
            mIRemoteService.registerCallback(mCallback);
        } catch (RemoteException e) {
            Log.e(TAG, e.toString());
        }
    }

    public void onServiceDisconnected(ComponentName className) {
        Log.e(TAG, "Service has unexpectedly disconnected");
        mIRemoteService = null;
    }
};

Answer 1

When you call bindService() it won’t necessarily return your service connection or API to access the service. It happens asynchronously. You need a callback like this:

class PictureUploadQueueServiceConnection implements ServiceConnection {
    public void onServiceConnected(ComponentName name, IBinder service){
        Log.d(TAG, "PictureUpload Service Connected!");            
        pictureUploadQueueApi = PictureUploadQueueServiceApi.Stub.asInterface(service);       
    }

    public void onServiceDisconnected(ComponentName name){
        Log.d(TAG, "PictureUpload Service Connection Closed!");
        pictureUploadQueueApi = null;
    }
};

Your call to do the bind should look like this:

getApplicationContext().bindService(new Intent("org.me.xxxx.PictureUploadQueueServiceApi"),
                        pictureUploadQueueServiceConnection,
                        Context.BIND_AUTO_CREATE
                );

Make sure in your service you are implementing the API Stub and returning an instance of it in your onBind() method:

private PictureUploadQueueServiceApi.Stub api = new PictureUploadQueueServiceApi.Stub() {
    @Override
    public void queuePictureUpload(String remoteURI, String localURI, String target, String description, String callback) throws RemoteException {
        appendPictureUpload(remoteURI, localURI, target, description, callback);
    }
    @Override
    public boolean isEmpty() {
        return queue.size() == 0 ? true : false;
    };
};

@Override
public IBinder onBind(Intent intent) {
    Log.d(TAG, "Bound Intent: " + intent);
    return api;
}

Lastly, to complete the example, the AIDL file for my example looks like this:

interface PictureUploadQueueServiceApi {

        void queuePictureUpload(String remoteURI, String localURI, String target, String description, String callback);

        boolean isEmpty();

    }