CODEWITHSUNDEEP
androidgoogle-castchromecast
ActiveApathy
ActiveApathy

Reputation: 1211

What's the right way to interact with Chromecast from an Android Notification?

I'm trying to figure out the right way to add Chromecast buttons (pause, play, etc) to an Android Notification. I've set up a custom notification that sends PendingIntents to a ChromecastService. That service is trying to interact with a class I built called ChromecastAdapter. The ChromecastAdapter implements MediaRouteAdapter and contains all the listeners and state that go along with casting. However, all this state is gone as soon as I exit the application. So, my ChromecastService doesn't end up having access to the Chromecast once my app is gone.

It seems to me that the only way to get this to work is refactor all the Chromecast state into a Service that implements MediaRouteAdapter. I really don't want to do this since I'm pretty happy with the way things are now.

Since these interactive Notifications are required by Google, I feel like there has to be a standard way of interacting with a cast from a Notification. Am I on the right track here? Do I have to place all my Chromecast interactions behind a Service?

Upvotes: 4

Views: 968

Answers (1)

Ali Naddaf
Ali Naddaf

Reputation: 19044

What the behavior should be depends on the type of app and the requirements of the app. If your app is "gone" (in the sense that the Application instance is gone), then the question that you should ask yourself is whether you would want to keep a notification mechanism to stay around; there are apps that when they are killed, the receiver also gets closed and user is sent back to the home screen on the chromecast device, in which case there is no reason to keep a notification around.

On the other hand, there are apps that based on their requirements, you would want to let the cast device continue what it was doing (for example play the video) even if the mobile app is gone. In those cases, you may want to have a notification mechanism in place for "bringing up" the app. To achieve that, you need to maintain certain amount of information/state/objects in a service, enough to be able to establish a connection again and "join" the running app. In addition, your "service" needs to be aware of the status of the app on your receiver so if that app is killed (say, someone else starts casting a different app to the device), it can be notified and exit.

Upvotes: 1

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