无限期运行Android服务

Question

I have a location service that runs in the background and uses the location manager to send lat and long values to my server every 30 seconds. I want this service to run infinitely long until the user stops the service. But what i am observing is after few hours, the service vanishes as it reaches more than 30+ mb. I want to know how I can make it run as long as it is not stopped by the user?

Few of my observations(correct me if I am wrong): In the allocation tracker, most of the objects that occupy the memory are the location manager objects. In the heap, when i cause gc, the memory allocated by my objects are vanishing and so i guess there is no memory leak. In the applications-->running services, i do not see any services running for 4+ hours. So What I am trying to do is not possible?

Any help/suggestions are greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

I'm not sure why your service starts to take up more than 30 megabytes, but it is possible you are leaking memory somehow.

In the end though, your design is flawed.The best thing you can do is:

1. Use the PendingIntent method registerLocationUpdates to register for location updates. You can specify the minTime between updates here.
2. If you need send the position updates precisely every 30 seconds, you can also register a PendingIntent with the AlarmManager to have an intent get sent every 30 seconds.
3. Have this PendingIntent start an IntentService.
4. Have the IntentService send the location data to your server.
5. When the user stops your application, simply unregister your PendingIntents with the LocationManager (and potentially AlarmManager).

Answer 2

I have a location service that runs in the background and uses the location manager to send lat and long values to my server every 30 seconds.

Please allow the user to choose the polling period, including "never poll".

Also, please realize that this will seriously impact the user's battery.

I want this service to run infinitely long until the user stops the service.

This is not possible. The closest you can get is via startForeground() , but not even that guarantees that your service will live forever.

Moreover, this is a serious anti-pattern in Android. Users hate applications that try to run forever, which is why we have to contend with task killers and the like.

But what i am observing is after few hours, the service vanishes as it reaches more than 30+ mb.

In a few hours of keeping the GPS on and the device awake all of the time, your user's battery will be dead, at which point your service and everything else vanishes.

With respect to the memory, if you think you are leaking memory, use MAT to track down the leaks.

Answer 3

Why don't you issue gc programatically - say every hour?

I don't know if it is impossible what you want to do. I guess it should be possible after all. What makes me wonder is: why doesn't the VM start gc and does instead crash?

Maybe there is in fact an issue with memory leakage?

Avoiding memory leaks -blogentry can give some hints, maybe.

Perhaps someone can give you more sophisticated advice if you give us some code of yours?