Question

I’d like to know what is the best practice/way of programmatically register a broadcast receiver. I want to register specific receivers according to user choice.

As the registration is done through the manifest file, I’m wondering if there’s a proper way to achieve this in code.

Answer 1

It sounds like you want to control whether components published in your manifest are active, not dynamically register a receiver (via Context.registerReceiver()) while running.

If so, you can use PackageManager.setComponentEnabledSetting() to control whether these components are active:

http://developer.android.com/reference/android/content/pm/PackageManager.html#setComponentEnabledSetting(android.content.ComponentName, int, int)

Note if you are only interested in receiving a broadcast while you are running, it is better to use registerReceiver(). A receiver component is primarily useful for when you need to make sure your app is launched every time the broadcast is sent.