Updating an intent that starts an activity

Question

I have an intent that starts an activity that shows an alert dialog when a new message comes in from GCM (Google Cloud Messenger). The Dialog shows the number of unread messages but if a new message comes in after one was already displayed and you have not viewed the previous one the dialog should update the unread count to reflect the number of new/unread messages.

However the intent does not update the dialog if the activity with the dialog is active so how can I update it since I cant call dismiss on the dialog?

the intent if there is a new message

if((incMsgs + dlMsgs) > 0 && !mMsgType.equals("Reg")){
                edit.putBoolean(Preferences.NEW_ALERT, true).commit();
                priorityMsgs = true;
                Intent i = new Intent(this,NotificationDialog.class);
                i.putExtra("incidents", incMsgs);
                i.putExtra("dlMessages", dlMsgs);
                i.setFlags(Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK);
                startActivity(i);
            }

Answer 1

You will have to override OnNewIntent of the activity. And in this update the Ui elements. For this to work your activity launchMode needs to be singleTop