Hey,

I'm looking to make a service which I can use to make calls to a web based rest api. I've spent a couple of days looking through stackoverflow.com, reading books and looking at articles whilst playing about with some code and I can't get anything which I'm happy with.

Basically I want to start a service on app init then I want to be able to ask that service to request a url and return the results. In the meantime I want to be able to display a progress window or something similar.

I've created a service currently which uses IDL, I've read somewhere that you only really need this for cross app communication, so think these needs stripping out but unsure how to do callbacks without it. Also when I hit the post(Config.getURL("login"), values) the app seems to pause for a while (seems weird - thought the idea behind a service was that it runs on a different thread!)

Currently I have a service with post and get http methods inside, a couple of AIDL files (for two way communication), a ServiceManager which deals with starting, stopping, binding etc to the service and I'm dynamically creating a Handler with specific code for the callbacks as needed.

I don't want anyone to give me a complete code base to work on, but some pointers would be greatly appreciated; even if it's to say I'm doing it completely wrong. I'm pretty new to Android and Java dev so if there are any blindingly obvious mistakes here - please don't think I'm a rubbish developer, I'm just wet behind the ears and would appreciate being told exactly where I'm going wrong.

Anyway, code in (mostly) full (really didn't want to put this much code here, but I don't know where I'm going wrong - apologies in advance):

public class RestfulAPIService extends Service  {

final RemoteCallbackList<IRemoteServiceCallback> mCallbacks = new RemoteCallbackList<IRemoteServiceCallback>();

public void onStart(Intent intent, int startId) {
    super.onStart(intent, startId);
}
public IBinder onBind(Intent intent) {
    return binder;
}
public void onCreate() {
    super.onCreate();
}
public void onDestroy() {
    super.onDestroy();
    mCallbacks.kill();
}
private final IRestfulService.Stub binder = new IRestfulService.Stub() {
    public void doLogin(String username, String password) {

        Message msg = new Message();
        Bundle data = new Bundle();
        HashMap<String, String> values = new HashMap<String, String>();
        values.put("username", username);
        values.put("password", password);
        String result = post(Config.getURL("login"), values);
        data.putString("response", result);
        msg.setData(data);
        msg.what = Config.ACTION_LOGIN;
        mHandler.sendMessage(msg);
    }

    public void registerCallback(IRemoteServiceCallback cb) {
        if (cb != null)
            mCallbacks.register(cb);
    }
};

private final Handler mHandler = new Handler() {
    public void handleMessage(Message msg) {

        // Broadcast to all clients the new value.
        final int N = mCallbacks.beginBroadcast();
        for (int i = 0; i < N; i++) {
            try {
                switch (msg.what) {
                case Config.ACTION_LOGIN:
                    mCallbacks.getBroadcastItem(i).userLogIn( msg.getData().getString("response"));
                    break;
                default:
                    super.handleMessage(msg);
                    return;

                }
            } catch (RemoteException e) {
            }
        }
        mCallbacks.finishBroadcast();
    }
    public String post(String url, HashMap<String, String> namePairs) {...}
    public String get(String url) {...}
};

A couple of AIDL files: package com.something.android

oneway interface IRemoteServiceCallback {
    void userLogIn(String result);
}

and package com.something.android import com.something.android.IRemoteServiceCallback;

interface IRestfulService {
    void doLogin(in String username, in String password);
    void registerCallback(IRemoteServiceCallback cb);
}

and the service manager:

public class ServiceManager {

    final RemoteCallbackList<IRemoteServiceCallback> mCallbacks = new RemoteCallbackList<IRemoteServiceCallback>();
    public IRestfulService restfulService;
    private RestfulServiceConnection conn;
    private boolean started = false;
    private Context context;

    public ServiceManager(Context context) {
        this.context = context;
    }

    public void startService() {
        if (started) {
            Toast.makeText(context, "Service already started", Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show();
        } else {
            Intent i = new Intent();
            i.setClassName("com.something.android", "com.something.android.RestfulAPIService");
            context.startService(i);
            started = true;
        }
    }

    public void stopService() {
        if (!started) {
            Toast.makeText(context, "Service not yet started", Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show();
        } else {
            Intent i = new Intent();
            i.setClassName("com.something.android", "com.something.android.RestfulAPIService");
            context.stopService(i);
            started = false;
        }
    }

    public void bindService() {
        if (conn == null) {
            conn = new RestfulServiceConnection();
            Intent i = new Intent();
            i.setClassName("com.something.android", "com.something.android.RestfulAPIService");
            context.bindService(i, conn, Context.BIND_AUTO_CREATE);
        } else {
            Toast.makeText(context, "Cannot bind - service already bound", Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show();
        }
    }

    protected void destroy() {
        releaseService();
    }

    private void releaseService() {
        if (conn != null) {
            context.unbindService(conn);
            conn = null;
            Log.d(LOG_TAG, "unbindService()");
        } else {
            Toast.makeText(context, "Cannot unbind - service not bound", Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show();
        }
    }

    class RestfulServiceConnection implements ServiceConnection {
        public void onServiceConnected(ComponentName className, IBinder boundService) {
            restfulService = IRestfulService.Stub.asInterface((IBinder) boundService);
            try {
            restfulService.registerCallback(mCallback);
            } catch (RemoteException e) {}
        }

        public void onServiceDisconnected(ComponentName className) {
            restfulService = null;
        }
    };

    private IRemoteServiceCallback mCallback = new IRemoteServiceCallback.Stub() {
        public void userLogIn(String result) throws RemoteException {
            mHandler.sendMessage(mHandler.obtainMessage(Config.ACTION_LOGIN, result));

        }
    };

    private Handler mHandler;

    public void setHandler(Handler handler) {
        mHandler = handler;
    }
}

Service init and bind:

// this I'm calling on app onCreate
servicemanager = new ServiceManager(this);
servicemanager.startService();
servicemanager.bindService();
application = (ApplicationState)this.getApplication();
application.setServiceManager(servicemanager);

service function call:

// this lot i'm calling as required - in this example for login
progressDialog = new ProgressDialog(Login.this);
progressDialog.setMessage("Logging you in...");
progressDialog.show();

application = (ApplicationState) getApplication();
servicemanager = application.getServiceManager();
servicemanager.setHandler(mHandler);

try {
    servicemanager.restfulService.doLogin(args[0], args[1]);
} catch (RemoteException e) {
    e.printStackTrace();
}

...later in the same file...

Handler mHandler = new Handler() {
    public void handleMessage(Message msg) {

        switch (msg.what) {
        case Config.ACTION_LOGIN:

            if (progressDialog.isShowing()) {
                progressDialog.dismiss();
            }

            try {
                ...process login results...
                }
            } catch (JSONException e) {
                Log.e("JSON", "There was an error parsing the JSON", e);
            }
            break;
        default:
            super.handleMessage(msg);
        }

    }

};

Any and all help is greatly appreciated and I'll even buy you a coffee or a beer if you fancy :D

Martyn