In my previous post “Using the Android Interface Definition Language (AIDL) to make a Remote Procedure Call (RPC) in Android” I’ve explained the basics on how inter-process communication can be implemented in Android. Now we will take a look at a specialized field in this area: Using Parcelables as parameters of an AIDL method.
As described in the previous post it is possible to either use primitive java types within a remote method signature or any class which implements the android.os.Parcelable interface. Using this interface it is possible to define arbitrarily complex data types which can be used as parameters or return values of methods during a remote method call.
I’ve created a modified version of the first example app to give you a basic example which relies on a Parcelable object as a method return value. Continue reading →
AIDL
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May 11
Using self-defined Parcelable objects during an Android AIDL RPC / IPC call
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Apr 11
Using the Android Interface Definition Language (AIDL) to make a Remote Procedure Call (RPC) in Android
There are different ways to communicate with a Service. A commonly used approach is to use Intents where the Service can respond according to the intent action. This is easily implemented but if the Service is providing many different operations the resulting code might become complex which will result in a hardly maintainable code. Furthermore, when using Intents the developer always has to take care of adding the parameters to the intent and after the result intent was received the result-parameters have to be retrieved from the intent. This will result in an increased programming overhead within the client each time a remote functionality is called which can lead to error-prone code. To avoid these disadvantages you can use the built-in Remote Procedure Call (RPC) mechanism of Android. To demonstrate the use of RPCs in Android I’ve created a basic example. This example consists of two apps where the first contains a Service and the second an Activity. The Activity will connect to the Service using the Android RPC mechanism and will query a String from that Service. Continue reading →