Could a service bind another service

Question

I just want to know could I bind a service from another service. For example, currently I have an activity A starting a service B and now I just want service B to bind and start another service C. So does anybody know how to do that? That means could I use the same method for activity A to start a service on a service to start another service?

Answer 1

You can call bindService from a Service exactly the same way you can call it from an Activity. You'll notice from the javadoc that the only place you can't call bindService is in a BroadcastReceiver. You can use a ServiceConnection as well to receive the Binder.

Answer 2

This works for me. If I call bindService from onCreate then onServiceConnected is in a race with the first call to onHandleIntent, so re-submit the intent if it arrives too soon. My code is roughly like this.

class MyService extends IntentService implements ServiceConnection {
  IMyOtherService iService;

  @Override
  void onCreate() {
       bindService(intent);
  }

  @Override
  void onServiceConnected(ComponentName name, IBinder service) {
       iService = IMyService.Stub.asInterface(service); 
  }

  @Override
  void onHandleIntent(Intent intent) {
       if (iService == null) {
          /* onHandleIntent has lost the race with onServiceConnected
           * so wait 250 ms and resend the Intent.
           */
          try { System.getCurrentThread().sleep(250); } catch (InterruptedException e) { }
          startService(intent);
       }
       iService->method1();
  }