Pass Activity to service

Question

Need to pass Activity to Service. I am using

intent.putExtra("messagedialog", this.messageDialog)

to pass the activity.

However when i try to get the activity using

messageDialog = intent.getParcelableExtra("messagedialog");

it returns null .

Is there i am missing something.

Answer 1

Need to pass Activity to Service

Whatever problem you think you are going to solve this way, there is a better solution. You may wish to post a question on an Android developer support site , where you explain in detail how this service and this activity are supposed to interact.

Is there i am missing something

First, an Activity is not Parcelable .

Second, even if you attempt to implement Parcelable on Activity , passing data via Intent extras is not pass-by-reference, but rather pass-by-value. Your service would retrieve a useless, detached copy of the activity, not the actual activity that (perhaps) is running.

I need to show activity from which end developer can override. like he can overide color/font/layout

Have the client send your service a PendingIntent , such as via an Intent extra. Your service can then send() that PendingIntent when needed. The PendingIntent can point to an activity that the client chooses to be shown.