CODEWITHSUNDEEP
androidgpsandroid-location
Asim
Asim

Reputation: 7114

Best way to give Location information to a service

I have searched quite a bit and I'm not totally clueless. I have implemented a temporary solution on my end but was wondering if there is a better approach out there.

I have an app that sends a person's location after every 60 seconds to a server. On my dashboard (the main screen that will go to onPause after application starts), I have registered a LocationManager with the following code:

service = (LocationManager) getSystemService(LOCATION_SERVICE);
        boolean enabled = service
                .isProviderEnabled(LocationManager.GPS_PROVIDER);

        if (!enabled)
        {
            Intent intent = new Intent(Settings.ACTION_LOCATION_SOURCE_SETTINGS);
            startActivity(intent);
        }
        else
        {
            Criteria criteria = new Criteria();
            provider = service.getBestProvider(criteria, false);
            service.requestLocationUpdates(provider, 10000, 50, this);

            Location location = service.getLastKnownLocation(provider);

            // Initialize the location fields
            if (location != null)
            {
                onLocationChanged(location);
            }
            else
            {
                Log.d("Location: ", "No update received");
            }
        }

However, as I mentioned, this activity will be minimized by the user (by pressing the home button). There is a service that gets called every 60 seconds by an AlarmManager. That service accesses static variables from the Dashboard Activity (lat, lon) and sends it to the server.

My question:

If the activity goes onPause, will the requestLocationUpdates function stop? Or will it keep working?

If it keeps working, it will keep updating the two lat and lon static String objects and the service will keep getting updated values. If they stop, the service will keep getting the same old values again and again.

Also, is there a better way to approach this problem? Using a mix of GPS Provider and Network Provider? (I need fairly accurate values).

EDIT

Here's my Alarm. This code is inside Login Activity

Intent i = new Intent(con, LocationPoller.class);
                i.putExtra(LocationPoller.EXTRA_INTENT, new Intent(con,
                        Login.class));
                i.putExtra(LocationPoller.EXTRA_PROVIDER,
                        LocationManager.GPS_PROVIDER);

                gps = (AlarmManager) getSystemService(Context.ALARM_SERVICE);

                PendingIntent pi = PendingIntent.getBroadcast(con, 0, i, 0);
                gps.setRepeating(AlarmManager.RTC_WAKEUP, c.getTimeInMillis(),
                        10 * 1000, pi);
                Log.d("Service: ",
                        "GPS Service started and scheduled with AlarmManager");

Here's my receiver (also within Login activity)

private class ReceiveMessages extends BroadcastReceiver
    {
        @Override
        public void onReceive(Context context, Intent intent)
        {
            Location loc = (Location) intent.getExtras().get(
                    LocationPoller.EXTRA_LOCATION);

            String msg;

            if (loc == null)
            {
                msg = intent.getStringExtra(LocationPoller.EXTRA_ERROR);
            }
            else
            {
                msg = loc.toString();
            }

            if (msg == null)
            {
                msg = "Invalid broadcast received!";
            }

            Log.d("GPS Broadcast: ", msg);
        }
    }

Nothing's happening :s Not getting anything on logcat which means the broadcast isn't being received.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 291

Answers (1)

Amit
Amit

Reputation: 1385

When activity goes on pause, all registered listeners will stop. Better way to implement this is, alarm manager sent a broadcast every 60 seconds, this broadcast receiver starts a service and this service will request a location on Wakeful thread, once location information is retrieved, update the location on server.

There is an Open source library available with an example (courtesy CommonsWare), please refer below link. Its under Apache 2.0 license

Location Polling Library

Please find my sample project using above library. I have modified few things in the above library and created my own version.

Location Polling Demo Application

Upvotes: 1

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