For GcmListenerService is onMessageReceived background?

Question

When I extend GcmListenerService, is onMessageReceived running in a background process or is it on the UI thread? I need to know if I may make network calls inside the method body without using an asyncTask or such.

I looked at the source code and sure enough it is a vanilla service with no handlers. But there is a bit of code about THREAD_POOL_EXECUTOR and a number of apparently obfuscated stuff.

Answer 1

When I extend GcmListenerService, is onMessageReceived running in a background process or is it on the UI thread? I need to know if I may make network calls inside the method body without using an asyncTask or such.

Yes you can make network calls inside onMessageReceived() method because it is running in a background process. For example, you can download an image in this method before displaying it on notification using big image notification style.