Question

We needed a location service for our app that was available from anyplace.
We used s singletone with Application context for system services and more, and has two basic methods start and stop which listen to location providers and stop listening respectively.

We have getLastLocation method that retrieves the current most updated and accurate location we could find.

We have another method that gives me a headache 🙂

Location getLocationWithWait(Class c) which supposed to get a location if available, if not it will return null and will create a Timer for 45 seconds.if the 45 seconds have passed and no location was found then the timer will broadcast to the class given in the parameter a ‘no location’ broadcast, otherwise if the location callbacks will be called they will cancel the timer and will send ‘location found’ broadcast to the class in the parameter.
So here are my questions:

1. i started to think the whole
   architecture here is wrong, any
   better way to implement a location
   service to cater ANY Activity in my
   application ?
2. i used a Timer an not Handler since
   the singletone i use is NOT an
   activity so i have no Looper an
   creating a thread with looper looks
   to me just as bad as creating
   another Thread for the timer… i
   did wanted to use the Activity
   instead, but then… if the activity
   pauses and resumes i need to keep
   track of the timer’s remaining time.
3. the broadcasts may also be of a
   problem since if the activty pauses
   it will miss the broadcast and then
   i need to keep track in my
   singletone after several states,
   StickyBroadcast may solve it but
   that one i can’t send to specific
   class but to the whole system only.

So finally will it be any advantage to make this class a Service ?(to be honest i thought of maybe one advantage but not much) i want a location service with timeout much like google do in their “My Location” in maps.

10x.

Answer 1

Wouldn’t it be better to use a LocationListener, as described in Requesting Location Updates?

You can then use a ‘FastFix’ in onResume()

Without knowing a bit more about your requirements, it’s difficult to make more specific suggestions.

Hope this helps,

Phil Lello