Question

I have an activity that binds to a service. The service provides the functions to interact with an XMPP server.

Then, the activity launches a second activity that needs to access to the same service (for instance to initiate a voice call).

I was thinking to bind the second activity again to the same service, but it seems like an overkill, since when the second activity starts the service should already exist and should be there until the first activity destroys it on purpose (binding again means creating a new connection and waiting for the bind to happen asynchronously before using the service).

At the moment I’m using startActivityForResult() to launch the second activity and then I wait for the result and I access the service from the first activity, but I want to change the logic (the second activity must interact with the service and then the first one takes care of closing the second activity when a signal is received back from the service).

Any suggestion on how can I pass the service object to the second activity?

Answer 1

binding 2 activities to the same service is no overkill. It is actually the proper way of doing what i understand you are trying to do : access xmpp functions provided by a service from 2 different activities.

by binding the second activity, you will not start the service again, as it has already been started. it will connect to the same service as the first activity.

you could, of course, put all the binding to a single place, like a singleton or the Application class.