Android: Passing variables to an already running service

Question

I am having issues passing a value from an Activity to an already running service. I was wondering what the best approach to take would be? Adding extras wont work as I believe this has to be done before the intent is started? (correct me if i'm wrong).

Any help would be great! I can elaborate if needed.

Dan.

Solution

If your service is not an IntentService, you can call startService(...) as many times you want. The service will run the first time but next calls will result in new onStartCommand() calls with the new extras you need.

Check this answer and the doc.

Comments

[Sam]

Agreed, here's more proof from Activity#startService()'s documentation.

[Daniel Flannery]

Ah I see. Dont know how I missed this reading the documentation. Thanks for your swift answer!

[scai]

Also see this answer which explains how to to call startService() to pass new Intents and read them inside your service during onStartCommand(). Essentially the same answer as here but a little more verbose.