Question

I think I’ve got the point of IntentService class. it handles a queue which prevents too or more instances of the service been executed together.

I’ve found it useful, but what if I have too derived classes from IntentService which have different purpose, and I want both of them running together without waiting to each other?

It was great if there is any flag or attribute I can set, that will say something like: “allow to too or more diffrent derived class of intent service to run each one on his own queue”

is there any way doing that?

I know about all the other alternatives such as “regular” service, AsyncTesk, manually manage threads, so please don’t suggest me consider using them instead. I know their advantages and limitations.

thanks in advance.

Answer 1

There’s nothing preventing two IntentServices from executing together.

As an example, given a service, ServiceA

public class ServiceA extends IntentService {
   ...
}

and a subclass of ServiceA aptly named ServiceB

public class ServiceB extends ServiceA {
}

ServiceB will not share an executor/queue (or anything else for that matter) with ServiceA, i.e. both can execute at the same time. You can easily test this by putting a loop in ServiceA, e.g.

protected void onHandleIntent(Intent intent) {
    for (int i = 0; i < 20; i++) {
        System.out.println(getClass().getSimpleName() + " says hello");
        try {
            Thread.sleep(2000L);
        } catch (InterruptedException e) {
            return;
        }
    }
}

and then calling

startService(new Intent(this, ServiceA.class));
startService(new Intent(this, ServiceB.class));

from your Activity. They will both be running at the same time.