Question

My Activity starts an IntentService that then calls a remote API. I then need to pass the resulting data back to the Activity (through a BroadcastReceiver). Within much of the rest of the app this data is encapsulated in a single class, with primitive member variables holding the data. But as the results are passed across through an Intent I’m limited in my options as I can’t pass a standard Java object across the boundary. I am looking for a neat and tidy way to pass objects like this through an Intent, without requiring large amounts of repetitive code needing to be written.

Options:

1. Implement Parcelable on my class. Tedious to implement/maintain
2. Pass each member variable individually, and reconstruct the object on the other side. Tedious to implement/maintain
3. Use AIDL to specify the contract. Never done it before, not sure how appropriate this is.
4. Serialise the object and pass the String through to the Activity. Is there a String length limit for passing through an Intent? I gather there can be performance issues.

Which approach should I use, and why?

Answer 1

Does this remote API serialize the data in some way (JSON or XML)? Can you not hold off on the deserializing until it reaches the Activity?

Failing this I would see serialization as the best option. Parcelable is a specific type of serialization which, as you point out is a little more tricky to implementent but should be more performant if you are concerned about performance. Unless you are handling a huge amount of traffic, though, the serialization option shouldn’t be too sluggish in my experience.