Thanks for your reply. I found the information about setting flags with startActivity() to be extremely useful.
However my original question remains unanswered: How can an activity know when a service has performed a task? Regards, Fred On 22/07/2011, Mark Murphy <mmur...@commonsware.com> wrote: > On Fri, Jul 22, 2011 at 9:05 AM, Fred Niggle <fred.nig...@googlemail.com> > wrote: >> Thanks for your reply. >> >> I guess my initial question can therefore be reduced to: How can an >> activity know when a service has performed a task? > > You have no activity. That's the point. > > Most medication dosing is on a 24-hour basis -- you take the > pills/drops/leeches once per day. The odds of your activity existing > at the point in time the 24-hour alarm goes off are negligible. Even > if the user had been visiting your application relatively recently, > Android terminates processes to free up RAM as it goes along. You must > not assume that you have an activity. > > Hence, when the alarm goes off, if you want to pop up an activity, you > need to start one with startActivity(). If you are concerned about > there then possibly being *two* instances of your activity, add > FLAG_ACTIVITY_CLEAR_TOP and FLAG_ACTIVITY_SINGLE_TOP to the Intent you > use with startActivity(). If you do have an existing instance of this > activity, it will come to the foreground and be called with > onNewIntent(); otherwise, a new instance will be created as normal. > > I recommend that you also give the user an option for a Notification > instead of popping up an activity. > > -- > Mark Murphy (a Commons Guy) > http://commonsware.com | http://github.com/commonsguy > http://commonsware.com/blog | http://twitter.com/commonsguy > > Warescription: Three Android Books, Plus Updates, One Low Price! > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google > Groups "Android Developers" group. > To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > android-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Developers" group. To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to android-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en