Question

I don’t really understand the use and concept of an Intent. I DO understand that an activity are one visual interface and one endeavour that the user can partake in. I THINK an intent is used to launch and communicate between different activities. If so, then how would you accomplish that? A code sample would be helpful. In analogy form, try to compare an intent to something in everyday life. That would help very much!

Answer 1

An Intent can be used to launch activities, by supplying an action and some data. An example of using an Intent action to view a web-page:

Intent myIntent = new Intent(Intent.VIEW_ACTION,
                  Uri.parse("http://www.google.com"));

Where the action is Intent.VIEW_ACTION and the data string is an Uri of Google’s website.

Common Tasks and How To Do Them in Android

I have tried, but its tough to compare an Intent with something in everyday life. If I come up with something, I’ll jot it down with my answer.