Menu
What is a BroadcastReceiver? What are its uses and how can I use it?
810
Broadcast in android is the system-wide events that can occur when the device starts, when a message is received on the device or when incoming calls are received, or when a device goes to airplane mode, etc. Broadcast Receivers are used to respond to these system-wide events.
A broadcast receiver (receiver) is an Android component which allows you to register for system or application events. All registered receivers for an event are notified by the Android runtime once this event happens.
An application listens for specific broadcast intents by registering a broadcast receiver in AndroidManifest. xml file. Consider we are going to register MyReceiver for system generated event ACTION_BOOT_COMPLETED which is fired by the system once the Android system has completed the boot process.
A Service receives intents that were sent specifically to your application, just like an Activity. A Broadcast Receiver receives intents that were broadcast system-wide to all apps installed on the device.
Start by reading the documentation. Also, copying from Application Fundamentals:
Broadcast receivers
A broadcast receiver is a component that responds to system-wide broadcast announcements. Many broadcasts originate from the system—for example, a broadcast announcing that the screen has turned off, the battery is low, or a picture was captured. Applications can also initiate broadcasts—for example, to let other applications know that some data has been downloaded to the device and is available for them to use. Although broadcast receivers don't display a user interface, they may create a status bar notification to alert the user when a broadcast event occurs. More commonly, though, a broadcast receiver is just a "gateway" to other components and is intended to do a very minimal amount of work. For instance, it might initiate a service to perform some work based on the event.
A broadcast receiver is implemented as a subclass of BroadcastReceiver and each broadcast is delivered as an Intent object. For more information, see the BroadcastReceiver class.
Finally, read in Common Tasks how you can utilize BroadcastReceivers to listen for messages and set alarms.
119
If you love us? You can donate to us via Paypal or buy me a coffee so we can maintain and grow! Thank you!
Donate Us With
