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Why do we need the new Android WorkManager if we already have a JobScheduler along with a few nifty backports (AndroidJob and FirebaseJobDispatcher) with the same functionality? Does it have any killer-features or something? Because I don't see anything that makes me want to migrate to the yet another scheduler.
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As mentioned in the previous section, WorkManager internally uses the JobScheduler API on Android 6.0 (API Level 23 – Marshmallow) and above devices. Therefore, there won't be any major differences between the WorkManager and JobScheduler on Android 6.0 and above devices. Both would behave in the same way.
Android WorkManager is a background processing library which is used to execute background tasks which should run in a guaranteed way but not necessarily immediately. With WorkManager we can enqueue our background processing even when the app is not running and the device is rebooted for some reason.
android.app.job.JobScheduler. This is an API for scheduling various types of jobs against the framework that will be executed in your application's own process. See JobInfo for more description of the types of jobs that can be run and how to construct them.
The WorkManager API makes it easy to specify deferrable, asynchronous tasks and when they should run. These APIs let you create a task and hand it off to WorkManager to run immediately or at an appropriate time. On the other hand, coroutines are designed to compute a given task only immediately and asynchronously.
"WorkManager has a lot of nice features but its main goal is to use the JobScheduler's API on older devices"... Wait, but we already have some backports. What's wrong with them? To cut it short:
FireaseJobDispatcher is fine but it requires Google Play to schedule jobs which isn't good if we're targeting China, for example.
Evernote's AndroidJob is an excellent backport with a lot of functionality. Imho, it was the best choice for scheduling any work. But now the latest version of the library uses the aforementioned WorkManager under the hood. And, unfortunately, sooner or later the library will be deprecated:
If you start a new project, you should be using WorkManager instead of this library. You should also start migrating your code from this library to WorkManager. At some point in the future this library will be deprecated.
They suggest to switch to the WorkManager because it provides more features and they also give us a short comparison:
| Feature | android-job | WorkManager | | ------------------ | ----------- | ----------- | | Exact jobs | Yes | No | | Transient jobs | Yes | No | | Daily jobs | Yes | No | | Custom Logger | Yes | No | | Observe job status | No | Yes | | Chained jobs | No | Yes | | Work sequences | No | Yes | Imo, the the last 3 features are very useful and supported only by the WorkManager. So the answer to my last question is yes, it does have some killer-features:
To learn more about WorkManager one should definitely watch this talk by Sumir Kataria
P.S. If anyone knows why FirebaseJobDispatcher is actively supported by Google engineers instead of being deprecated write in the comments below :)
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WorkManager uses JobScheduler service to schedule the jobs. If JobScheduler is not supported by the device, then it uses Firebase JobDispatcher service. If Firebase JobDispatcher is not available on the device, it will use AlarmManager and BroadcastReceiver.
So with WorkManager, you don't need to worry about backward compatibility. In addition to this, it allows for defining constraints, which need to be met in order for the job to be run, such as defining network constraints, battery level, charging state and storage level.
It allows task chaining and passing of argument to the job.
http://www.zoftino.com/scheduling-tasks-with-workmanager-in-android
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