Question

I have an IntentService that is making a network call and receiving back some JSON data. I package this response data in custom object that implements parcelable. If I add this parcelable object to an intent as an extra and then launch an activity using that intent, everything seems to work as expected, i.e. I can retrieve the parcelable from the intent in the newly created activity. However, if I create the intent from within the onHandleIntent() method of my IntentService and then use sendBroadcast(), the broadcast receiver’s onReceive() method never fires. If I don’t add the parcelable to the intent, though, the onReceive() method fires as expected. Following are some relevant code snippets:

Parcelable Object:

public class JsonResponse implements Parcelable {

private int responseCode;
private String responseMessage;
private String errorMessage;

public JsonResponse() {

}

/*
/   Property Methods
 */
public void setResponseCode(int code) {
    this.responseCode = code;
}

public void setResponseMessage(String msg) {
    this.responseMessage = msg;
}

public void setErrorMessage(String msg) {
    this.errorMessage = msg;
}

/*
/   Parcelable Methods
 */
public static final Creator<JsonResponse> CREATOR = new Creator<JsonResponse>() {

    @Override
    public JsonResponse createFromParcel(Parcel parcel) {
        return new JsonResponse(parcel);
    }

    @Override
    public JsonResponse[] newArray(int i) {
        return new JsonResponse[i];
    }
};

private JsonResponse(Parcel parcel) {
    responseCode = parcel.readInt();
    responseMessage = parcel.readString();
    errorMessage = parcel.readString();
}

@Override
public void writeToParcel(Parcel parcel, int i) {
    parcel.writeInt(responseCode);
    parcel.writeString(responseMessage);
    parcel.writeString(errorMessage);
}

@Override
public int describeContents() {
    return 0;
}
}

onHandle() of IntentService:

protected void onHandleIntent(Intent intent) {

    service = new LoginService();
    service.login("whoever", "whatever");

    JsonResponse response = new JsonResponse();
    response.setResponseCode(service.responseCode);
    response.setResponseMessage(service.responseMessage);
    response.setErrorMessage(service.errorMessage);

    Intent i = new Intent();
    i.putExtra("jsonResponse", response);
    i.setAction(ResultsReceiver.ACTION);
    i.addCategory(Intent.CATEGORY_DEFAULT);
    sendBroadcast(i);
}

Any ideas? Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

It appears that the problem has to do with the size of the object being added as an extra. When one of the string properties of the response object grows too large, the broadcast apparently fails. I have no sources to confirm this, only some trial and error in manipulating one of the strings while leaving all other variables of the equation constant.