Monday, April 27, 2015

What is Intent in Android ?



    An Intent is a messaging object you can use to request an action from another app component. Although intents facilitate communication between components in several ways, there are three fundamental use-cases:

    • To start an activity:


    An Activity represents a single screen in an app. You can start a new instance of an Activity by passing an Intent tostartActivity(). The Intent describes the activity to start and carries any necessary data.

    If you want to receive a result from the activity when it finishes, call startActivityForResult(). Your activity receives the result as a separate Intent object in your activity's onActivityResult()callback. For more information, see the Activities guide.

    • To start a service:


    A Service is a component that performs operations in the background without a user interface. You can start a service to perform a one-time operation (such as download a file) by passing an Intent to startService(). The Intent describes the service to start and carries any necessary data.

    If the service is designed with a client-server interface, you can bind to the service from another component by passing an Intent to bindService(). For more information, see the Services guide.

    • To deliver a broadcast:


    A broadcast is a message that any app can receive. The system delivers various broadcasts for system events, such as when the system boots up or the device starts charging. You can deliver a broadcast to other apps by passing an Intent to sendBroadcast(),sendOrderedBroadcast(), or sendStickyBroadcast().

    No comments:

    Post a Comment