Broadcast receiver not receiving extras

Question

Upon initialization, my viewmodel creates an alarm. It is set to ring 10 seconds after the application is launched. The alarm manager receives a pendingIntent. The pendingIntent receives an intent. The intent is a broadcast receiver. The intent contains extras which bring me to my problem. Below is the relevant code for my viewmodel:

MainActivityViewModel.kt

    init {
        val intent =
            Intent(app, TimetableAlarmReceiver::class.java).also {
                val alarmMessage =
                    "message"

                it.putExtra("message", alarmMessage)
                Timber.i("The extra message is $alarmMessage")

                it.putExtra("dayOfWeek", getTodayEnumDay())
                Timber.i("The extra dayOfWeek is ${getTodayEnumDay()}")
            }
        Timber.i("The intent is $intent")

        val pendingIntent = PendingIntent.getBroadcast(
            app,
            0,
            intent,
            PendingIntent.FLAG_UPDATE_CURRENT
        )
        val alarmManager = app.getSystemService(Context.ALARM_SERVICE) as AlarmManager

        alarmManager.setExact(
            AlarmManager.RTC_WAKEUP,
            System.currentTimeMillis().plus(10000L),
            pendingIntent
        )
    }

The broadcast receiver does not detect any extras:

TimetableAlarmReceiver.kt

    override fun onReceive(context: Context, intent: Intent?) {
        Timber.i("The receiver has been called")
        val notificationManager = ContextCompat.getSystemService(
            context,
            NotificationManager::class.java
        ) as NotificationManager

        if(intent!=null){
            Timber.i("The extras are:${intent.extras}")
            val message = intent.getStringExtra("message")
            Timber.i("The extra message is $message")
            val dayOfWeek = intent.getSerializableExtra("dayOfWeek") as DayOfWeek?
            Timber.i("The extra dayOfWeek is $dayOfWeek")
        }

The irony of the logs:

MainActivityViewModel.kt Logs

2021-04-14 17:42:38.684 5492-5492/com.example.android.mycampusapp I/MainActivityViewModel: The extra message is message
2021-04-14 17:42:38.687 5492-5492/com.example.android.mycampusapp I/MainActivityViewModel: The extra dayOfWeek is WEDNESDAY
2021-04-14 17:42:38.687 5492-5492/com.example.android.mycampusapp I/MainActivityViewModel: The intent is Intent { cmp=com.example.android.mycampusapp/.timetable.receiver.TimetableAlarmReceiver (has extras) }

TimetableAlarmReceiver.kt logs:

2021-04-14 17:53:38.884 5814-5814/com.example.android.mycampusapp I/TimetableAlarmReceiver: The receiver has been called
2021-04-14 17:53:38.885 5814-5814/com.example.android.mycampusapp I/TimetableAlarmReceiver: The extras are:Bundle[EMPTY_PARCEL]
2021-04-14 17:53:38.886 5814-5814/com.example.android.mycampusapp I/TimetableAlarmReceiver: The extra message is null
2021-04-14 17:53:38.886 5814-5814/com.example.android.mycampusapp I/TimetableAlarmReceiver: The extra dayOfWeek is null

I have tried a variety of solutions here on stack overflow that involve a receiver that has been called successfully. A bunch of them involve changing the pending intent flag, but that is not helpful here. I am using the correct flag PendingIntent.FLAG_UPDATE_CURRENT. In any case, changing the flag to Intent.FILL_IN_DATA or PendingIntent.FLAG_CANCEL_CURRENT doesn't work.

Answer 1

Ah. You can't put custom serializable objects as "extras" in an Intent that you send to AlarmManager. You can only put know types in there. If you need a custom type then you will need to serialize the custom object into a byte array and add that to your Intent as an "extra".