GCM SERVICE_NOT_AVAILABLE on Android 2.2

Question

I am getting the error \"SERVICE_NOT_AVAILABLE\" on my GoogleCloudMessaging.register() call on a Android 2.2 device.

I am writing an app that uses GoogleCloudMessagi

Answer 1

So, there is another thing to watch out for that tripped me up. I had it working fine in emulator + with test application, but then I had issues deploying it on actual devices.
Was consistently getting the SERVICE_NOT_AVAILABLE error, and resorted to an approach similar to the answer above:

     IntentFilter filter = new IntentFilter("com.google.android.c2dm.intent.REGISTRATION");
     BroadcastReceiver receiver = new BroadcastReceiver() {
         @Override
         public void onReceive(Context context, Intent intent) {
             Log.i(TAG, "Got into onReceive for manual GCM retrieval. "
             + intent.getExtras());
             String regId = intent.getStringExtra("registration_id");

             if (regId != null && !regId.isEmpty()) {
                 theResult.add(regId);
             } else {
                 theResult.add("");
             }
             lastDitchEffortComplete = true;
             }
         };
     cont.registerReceiver(receiver, filter);

This sort-of worked. But it was taking an oddly long amount of time to receive this information, and in a wait-loop I had, it would ONLY ever retrieve it AFTER I'd given up and let things proceed.

This got me thinking that there might be another cause to the SERVICE_NOT_AVAILABLE msg.

This is the code I had to do the fetching/registration with GCM:

new AsyncTask() {
                final long timeSleep = 1000;

                @Override
                protected Void doInBackground(Void... params) {
                    GoogleCloudMessaging gcm = GoogleCloudMessaging.getInstance(cont);
                    String registrationId = "";
                    int count = 0;
                    while (count < 1) {
                        try {
                            count++;
                            Log.i(TAG, "Starting GCM Registration Attempt #" + count);
                            registrationId = gcm.register(CLOUDAPPID);
                            rph.storeRegistrationId(registrationId);
                            return null;
                        } catch (IOException e) {
                            e.printStackTrace();
                        }

                        Log.w(TAG, "Registration failed.  Retrying in " + timeSleep + " ms.");
                        try {
                            Thread.sleep(timeSleep);
                        } catch (InterruptedException e) {
                        }
                    }

                    return null;
                }
            }.execute().get();

The main thing to look for here is the last line.

.execute.get();

A "clever/cheating" way to block on asynchronous off-thread results.

It turns out, that IS what is causing the problem. As soon as I just had:

.execute();

Let it pass through, and made the algorithm/code work with reporting back and not needing the registration id right away, then it was fine. I didn't even need the manual broadcast receiver, it just worked like it should.