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I have implemented a BroadcastReceiver which is triggered by the AlarmManager. The AlarmManager is initialized on BOOT_COMPLETED. So i have to declare the receiver in the manifest.
My problem is that i want the BroadcastReceiver only to do something when none of my own activities are in the foreground (aka the user is not interacting with my application). I pull information from a remote server and don't want to notify the user if he is currently in my application anyways.
So far i have not managed to find a way to determine if my application is in the foreground. Is there a way to do such thing? The ActivityManager tells me if my application is running but not whether it is in the foreground.
The problem is pretty much the same as described here: Inform Activity from a BroadcastReceiver ONLY if it is in the foreground
SOLUTION:
After evaluating several solutions i want to quickly outline what i think is the best method to deal with activities in the background/foreground.
The preferred way is to register a broadcast receiver in the onResume method of your activity and to deregister it on the activities on onPause. Any service or other background element will than need to send a broadcast intent with a specific action that your activity will intercept.
If your activity is in the foreground it will have its intent receiver registered and is able to directly deal with the intent send from your service. If it is not in the foreground it will not receive the intent but the service that invokved the broadcast will know that nobody intercepted its broadcast intent and will be able to deal with that itself. Eg it could than launch the desired activity, show a notification etc.
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In your finish() method, you want to use isActivityVisible() to check if the activity is visible or not. There you can also check if the user has selected an option or not.
Activity or dialog appears in foregroundWhen the covered activity returns to the foreground and regains focus, it calls onResume() . If a new activity or dialog appears in the foreground, taking focus and completely covering the activity in progress, the covered activity loses focus and enters the Stopped state.
Foreground services perform operations that are noticeable to the user. Foreground services show a status bar notification, so that users are actively aware that your app is performing a task in the foreground and is consuming system resources.
The following answer: "Is application running in background", summarizes solutions available for background/foreground checking.
Note:
Previously this answer suggested to use ActivityManager.getRunningAppProcesses(), however that method appeared to be not completely reliable and its usage is discouraged. Check the link above for the details.
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