Alarm Manager and BroadCastReceiver not firing

Question

The following code I have in onCreate for one of my Activity classes. I am expecting a log output every second when I enter that activity, but nothing happens.

private void setupAlarm() {

    AlarmManager alarmManager = (AlarmManager) getApplicationContext().getSystemService(Context.ALARM_SERVICE);
    Intent intent = new Intent(this,AdhIntent.class);
    PendingIntent pendingIntent = PendingIntent.getBroadcast(this,
            0, intent, 0);

    alarmManager.setRepeating(AlarmManager.RTC_WAKEUP, System.currentTimeMillis(), 1000, pendingIntent);
}


private class AdhIntent extends BroadcastReceiver {

    public AdhIntent() {
        System.out.println("2014");
    }

    @Override
    public void onReceive(Context context, Intent intent) {
        System.out.println("2014");

    }

}

Answer 1

First, AdhIntent needs to be a public class. Otherwise, Android cannot create an instance of it.

Second, AdhIntent needs to be registered in the manifest in a <receiver> element. Otherwise, Android cannot send a broadcast to it via your PendingIntent.

You also do not need getApplicationContext() -- only use that when you know completely and precisely why you are using it.

Finally, using AlarmManager to get control every second is not a particularly good use of AlarmManager. At best, that's fine for book examples, or for lightweight testing. If you really need to get control somewhere every second, there are better solutions, assuming that getting control every second is actually a sensible choice.