Question

When setting a service to go off at particular time, I use the AlarmManager system service.
Everything goes off without a problem, service is called and actions take place.

When the alarm time is reached, the service starts, and at this point I get the system time (System.currentTimeMillis()). I’m guessing this wont be the actual time the service start. Is there a way to get the time that was set for this PendingIntent?

ie

Set alarm for 9am.
DoStuffService starts at 9am.
DoStuffService knows it was supposed to start at 9am, and uses this value for future functions.

Answer 1

When you create an intent for your alarm, you could put extra data, including time of the alarm, into it like this:

Intent intent = new Intent("action name");

//put extra data into the intent:
intent.putExtra("alarm_time_hours", hours);
intent.putExtra("alarm_time_minutes", minutes);

PendingIntent sender = PendingIntent.getBroadcast(getApplicationContext(), 0, intent, PendingIntent.FLAG_UPDATE_CURRENT);
AlarmManager am = (AlarmManager) getSystemService(ALARM_SERVICE);
am.set(AlarmManager.RTC_WAKEUP, cal.getTimeInMillis(), sender);

Then in your receiver or service you need to get this extra data from received intent. Use something like this:

Bundle bundle = intent.getExtras();
if(bundle.containsKey("alarm_time_hours")) {
    int hours = bundle.getInt("alarm_time_hours");
}
if(bundle.containsKey("alarm_time_minutes")) {
    int minutes = bundle.getInt("alarm_time_minutes");
}