How to pass an activity context in an application to a service in an other application

Question

So I have an activity in an application that starts a service:

private void startService() {
    if (started) {
        Toast.makeText(Main.this, "Service already started",
                Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show();
    } else {
        Intent i = new Intent();
        i.setClassName("com.enorbitas.daemon.service",
                "com.enorbitas.daemon.service.DaemonService");
        startService(i);
        started = true;
        updateServiceStatus();
        Log.d(getClass().getSimpleName(), "startService()");
    }

}

The activity is launched by the following intent:

<intent-filter>
            <action android:name="android.hardware.usb.action.USB_DEVICE_ATTACHED" />
        </intent-filter>

The service then does the logging and connects with this custom usb device. In order to do that, it needs the activity context:

        mUsbManager = (UsbManager) parent.getSystemService(Context.USB_SERVICE);
        HashMap<String, UsbDevice> deviceList = mUsbManager.getDeviceList();
        Iterator<UsbDevice> deviceIterator = deviceList.values().iterator();
        while(deviceIterator.hasNext()){
            UsbDevice device = deviceIterator.next();
        }

        Intent intent = parent.getIntent();
        String action = intent.getAction();
        UsbDevice device = (UsbDevice) intent
                .getParcelableExtra(UsbManager.EXTRA_DEVICE);
        if (UsbManager.ACTION_USB_DEVICE_ATTACHED.equals(action)) {
            setDevice(device);
            Log.i(TAG, "usb conectado");
        } else if (UsbManager.ACTION_USB_DEVICE_DETACHED.equals(action)) {
            if (mDevice != null && mDevice.equals(device)) {
                setDevice(null);
                Log.i(TAG, "usb NO conectado");
            }
        }

parent would be the activity that starts the service. This approach used to work because that code used to be in the same application, but now I want it to be a service so that others applications can connect to it.

Is there a way to pass the context of the activity to the service? I read a lot about intents and bundles, parcelable and serialization, but none of it works for me. I need to pass the context.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

Every Service has its own Context, just use that. You don't need to pass a Service an Activity's Context.

I don't see why you need a specific Activity's Context to call getSystemService() and a Service will receive Intents from a BroadcastReceiver as readily as any Activity.

Also, if the originating Activity is destroyed while this Service is running, the Context will be invalid or the Activity will be leaked.