I am trying to implement a background service that makes an HTTP request to an API every 15mins for the whole day, starting when a certain activity is started. I need the service to be started every 15 minutes even if my application is not running or I am in another activity of that application. I've searched for an example for how to proceed an have looked at some Stackoverflow questions and answers for example: Start Android Service after every 5 minutes. which linked to this page : http://code4reference.com/2012/07/tutorial-on-android-alarmmanager/
From the discussion I know that I need to use an alarm manager, however all the implementations do not have this being done in the same activity they have broadcast receiver. The reason I would want to have the implementation in the same activity is because the results of the request is what I want to display on the UI.
Is there a way of implementing an alarm manager in this type of situation
however all the implementations do not have this being done in the same activity they have broadcast receiver
That is because that is your only viable option, and even that will not work well on Android 6.0+. The recipe for using AlarmManager for this sort of scenario is to have it start a WakefulBroadcastReceiver, which in turn will work with an IntentService to do the work and go away when the work is completed.
On Android 6.0+, courtesy of "Doze mode", your AlarmManager events will not fire every 15 minutes, if the device is not charging and not moving. Also, courtesy of "app standby" on Android 6.0+, your AlarmManager events will not fire every 15 minutes, if the user has not been in your application's UI for some time and the device is not charging.
The reason I would want to have the implementation in the same activity is because the results of the request is what I want to display on the UI.
This runs counter to an earlier statement that you made:
I need the service to be started every 15 minutes even if my application is not running
If your application is not running, then you do not have an activity.
You are welcome to have your IntentService post a message on an event bus, such as greenrobot's EventBus, to let your activity know about the results of the work... if the activity happens to be around (otherwise, the message will be ignored).
Related
The game I am working on is a missile-oriented GPS-based combat game on Android. The app checks every 15 minutes to see if the user is under attack by any other players, and if so, sends them a notification that they are under attack. Currently, because of the minimum 15 minute interval, the app sends these notifications either too late or not at all. What I need to do is alter this so that somehow, some way, the app checks the "under attack" status of the user more often than 15 minutes. Every minute or every 30 seconds would be ideal.
here is the doWork() method which starts the notification check:
{
if(!MainActivity.GetRunning())
{
Utilities.DebugLog(context, "AlertService", "Main activity not running. Firing notification service handler.");
NotificationServiceHandler handler = new NotificationServiceHandler(context);
handler.Start();
}
return Result.SUCCESS;
}
WorkManager is not a suitable tool for what you wish to do. You will need to use a foreground service and your own in-process timing engine (e.g., ScheduledExecutorService). That will not work for very long before Doze mode and other power-saving measures take effect, but hopefully your games are only an hour or so long.
Hej theBiscuit,
instead of using WorkManager, you could set up an AlarmManager to wake up the app and check for attacks.
If you want to do it while the app is running, a CountDownTimer could help for short periods of time.
The PeriodicTimeRequest has a minimum periodic time of 15 minutes. But I see, that for example Google Maps location sharing can update more frequently than that, and facebook messenger can also receive messages almost instantly.
I would like to send a notification to the user, when it got a new message. My application has to work on local network, so Firebase is not an option. I have to send a json request to the server, and if there is a new message, I show a notification to the user.
Regarding FCM:
FCM, which is available in all devices with Google Play takes the weight of subscribing to and receiving push events, under all the resource constraints Android has been ever introducing.
It's tightly coupled with the OS and is unified (one entity, one persistent connection for all apps in your device), which is why it works :)
Regarding Frequency of your Work:
Given your requirement of more frequent pings to the server, you'd need to have a service which runs all the time, i.e. A Foreground Service.
It is resource consuming though, so good luck convincing the user with a good reason why it should stay alive all the time.
I think you've managed to make the client-server interaction possible, since identifying a server in a local network is a huge task in itself.
use this in your service.
#Override
public int onStartCommand(Intent intent, int flags, int startId) {
CountDownTimer timer = new CountDownTimer(15 * 60 * 1000, 1000) {
#Override
public void onTick(long millisUntilFinished) {
// execute your task here, every sec
//if you want increase the count down interval from 1000 to what you want
}
#Override
public void onFinish() {
this.start();
// it will start again.
}
};
timer.start();
return START_STICKY;
}
I am afraid it is not going to be possible without using a set of workarounds. Which means you might not get a consistent behavior.
#Arvind has done a very good job explaining the benefits of a Firebase Service and it is the recommended approach for achieving such task.
First I'd like to point out that such restrictions on the WorkManager exist because Android has been suffering (between other things) of developers trying to abuse some mechanisms to get their software working and at the end of the day, the battery of the users had been suffering from such abuses and since Android 6 Google has started trying to address these issues. There's a good read for you over here about Doze mode and how to work with it
I am pointing this stuff out because I've been trying to build a chat service that wouldn't rely on Firebase and I really don't want you to waste as much time as me banging your head against a wall. There are things that you simply can't fight. That means that if the device enters in a "deep-sleep" mode sometimes you can only accept it.
My approach
Please
keep in mind the user interests and the life of their batteries and try to be as smooth as you can with their devices and this is just a workaround over the restrictions that have been imposed upon us. And that I discourage this approach due to the amount of work that it takes to pull off and for how misused it can be.
My solution
Essentially, to get notified (ie getting your code running) in an Android App you're going to be wanting to receive system events or Broadcasts. This is where you set up a BroadcastReceiver and you get Intents delivered to it and you can act upon them accordingly. BUT YOU HAVE TO BE QUICK BECAUSE YOU HAVE ONLY 10 SECONDS OF RUNTIME BEFORE THE OS KILLS THE PROCESS AGAIN. Ideally you would have a really quick server so you can have very little IO times to ensure you can be within 10 second restriction as frequently as possible.
So essentially you would be using a combination various of services that you would like to be monitoring in order to get notifications (aka Broadcasts) whenever the state of those changes. Here are a few ideas:
WiFi state (which will also be useful to see if you can reach your local server)
Bluetooth Low Energy packets (or Nearby which may solve the entirety of your problem depending on Nearby's capabilities)
WorkManager as you already pointed out.
AlarmManager to schedule a broadcast of intents every so often.
Geofencing (although it involves reading the user's location; you can set really small geofences around the office building and get notified by a Broadacast when users go through that geofence)
So whenever you receive a Broadcast of these sources you would handle such notifications from within the same BroadcastReceiver
From the implementation body of this Broadcast receiver you would poll the local network's server to check whether if your user has new messages or not and lift up a notification. And it's important to keep the amount of work and IO times the app has to do at a minimum since those add up and you've got only 10 seconds.
You can get around the 10 second mark if you launch a ForegroundService. Then, that period of time is going to be extended until a 10 minute mark and you will need a visible notification for the user stating something that you're checking if it's got any new messages.
Keep in mind
Don't stress the user's battery too much. Or Android will penalise your app and you'll end up notified less often or even completely not notified.
Be gentle with the user. If the user has to force-kill your app at some point it will stop receiving any sort of Broadcasts or running any sort of WorkTasks.
This solution can behave differently accross devices. Since the decisions of notifying your app are made by the OS, different OS (redmi, samsung, meizu...) you are likely to not end up with a consistent behavior across all devices
You don't have control over things, the OS does
Within measure, try to time your Broadcasts to your BroadcastReceiver within spans of 3 minutes or so; so you are always receiving a Broadcast below the 15 minute mark.
I have a problem using setExactAndAllowOnIdle. In my AlarmReceiver class I just show simple notification that shows when alarm was triggered and set another, same alarm but hour after.(currentTimeMillis + 60*60*1000). When my phone is in use application works fine, alarms come exactly on time. But when I let it work for few alarms without waking device up, they start to trigger with few minutes delays, or sometimes even exactly on time I wake up my phone.
You probably mean setExactAndAllowWhileIdle().
You didn't tell on which OS are You testing it but probably it's because of Doze Mode.
NOTICE:
Neither setAndAllowWhileIdle() nor setExactAndAllowWhileIdle() can
fire alarms more than once per 9 minutes, per app.
So You can't use this method to set every alarm what probably You doing.
For more information You can go here:
https://developer.android.com/training/monitoring-device-state/doze-standby.html
I have an application which has many activities that logins towards a web service. However my client want this application to log out after a certain timing of inactivity. Which includes screen off or no user interaction. I used the timer before but it will only work on a single activity and if i were to set the timer for 2 activities, 2 timers will be started and i'm not able to reset the previous timer when it moves on to the next activity.
I've thought that if i create a java class and extends Activity and all activities shares the same timer. Which means each time I need to start a timer, I will call the method on the java class.
Please advise or give suggestions on what actually should be done
I have a service that runs periodically using a timer to invoke itself, but should not run when the screen is off. When the screen on event is fired, the service should run, but only if it's past when the timer would have fired.
Right now I still run the timer continually, but have the service do nothing if the screen is off. I can also run the service via a broadcast receiver when the screen turns on - but this runs the service every time the screen is turned on, instead of only when it's past when the timer should have run. Recording this state in the service doesn't seem to work as Android will kill the JVM for the app in between executions.
What would be the cleanest/correct way to implement this type of behavior?
So there are a couple of intents that you can listen for, Intent.ACTION_SCREEN_OFF and Intent.ACTION_SCREEN_ON. However, these don't work as manifest receivers, they need to be explicitly registered.
See this answer: https://stackoverflow.com/a/9478013/1306452
In all scenarios, it's going to involve a long running service in order to listen for those events.
One thing to keep in mind is that these intents only listen for when the device becomes non-interactive and vice versa, not specifically when the screen goes off (see the description on the Intents).
The best way for you to achieve this behaviour would be to listen for when these intents with a long lived service, started with START_STICKY to help guarantee that the service is running. The service can register a receiver for the SCREEN_ON and OFF events, and when it gets these events either do nothing if the timer has not elapsed, or continue if it has.
This won't be nice on your battery life, and what ever you are doing it doesn't sound like it's going to be a pleasent user experience. You might also want to step back and see if there's another way around this obstacle (my 2 cents).