Question

I have to develop an application that gives a popup message at a certain time which is set by the user.

I will use the android AlarmManager, which starts a service, and that service will start the activity containing the popup interface with an OK button.

I want to pass data to that activity, how can this be done (otherwise i will have to query the database)?

• How to pass data from the activity to the service while setting the starting time using AlarmManager?
• How to later pass that data to the activity that is started by the service?

Also if a service starts an activity in my application (not the main activity), and database handler functions are in a separate class, is the database accessible?

Answer 1

When you pass a PendingIntent object to the AlarmManager.set method, you can put any extras you want in the Intent object wrapped in the pending intent. For example:

Intent intent = new Intent(getApplicationContext(), YourService.class);
intent.putExtra("someKey", someData);
intent.putExtra("anotherKey", anotherData);
PendingIntent pi = PendingIntent.getService(getApplicationContext(), REQUEST_CODE, intent, FLAGS);
alarmManager.set....

And then, as the service starts you receive the same intent object:

public void onStartCommand(Intent data, int startId, int flags) {
    int data1 = data.getExtra("someKey");
}

And you can do the same when starting the activity from your service:

Intent activityIntent = new Intent(getApplicationContext(), YourActivity.class);
intent.putExtra("key", data1);

In fact, if you don’t do anything special in your service but launching the activity, why won’t you just set an intent for the activity in your alarm?