can ever the intent received by a BroadcastReceiver be null?

Question

In other words :

@Override
public void onReceive(Context context, Intent intent) {
    final String action = intent.getAction(); // can intent==null here ?
    // could it ever throw a NPE ?
}

I need to solve this once and for all so please no ifs and buts. I would check for null but I suspect that it is not needed and therefore it is clumsy and inelegant to check. I had searched in the docs but have not found anything

EDIT : asked at google groups - see there for some interesting points

Answer 1

onReceive in a BroadcastReceiver is triggered by an Intent with an action that it's registered to. So without Intent being an instance of Intent and not null, the onReceive method would never get called.

That being said, strange things can happen. I haven't looked over the code that Google wrote around broadcasts, so while in it's correct usage it would never be null, having the check is a good idea, because it's coming from code you don't control.