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androidbroadcastreceiver

Inform Activity from a BroadcastReceiver ONLY if it is in the foreground


Maybe it's easy, but I couldn't really figure this out right so far... I got a BroadcastReceiver waiting to get triggered by the AlarmMangager - this works fine.

Now: because the event, if it occurs, needs to refresh some elements on screen of the main Activity, I would like to send an Intent from that background BroadcastReceiver to my Activity - but only if it is currently in the foreground, aka active.

If it is not running or not visible, I don't care - and the last thing I want to do is start the Activity by my intent! I handle repainting of the views in my onResume() method, so I don't care at all.

Any hints on how to do that? Thanks!

EDIT: my BroadcastReceiver is waiting for alarms that must be notified to the user. So, it must be there and declared in the manifest. The problem is: it will have to decide whether the mentioned Activity is currently up in front or not.


Solution

  • So this is almost Bino's answer, but: instead of moving the receiver into the activity, use two receivers, with different Intents. The first one is your original alarm Intent, with a receiver registered in the manifest as you already have, and then that receiver sends a second broadcast intent, which is handled by a receiver registered by the activity as Bino says.

    I've done this in my own timer project, on github. Here are the alarm receiver and the requery receiver. Hope that helps.