How to force an IntentService to stop immediately with a cancel button from an Activity?

Question

I have an IntentService that is started from an Activity and I would like to be able to stop the service immediately from the activity with a \"cancel\" button in the activi

Answer 1

As @budius already mentioned in his comment, you should set a boolean on the Service when you click that button:

// your Activity.java
public boolean onClick() {
   //...
   mService.performTasks = false;
   mService.stopSelf();
}

And in your Intent handling, before you do the important task of committing/sending the intent information, just use that boolean:

// your Service.java
public boolean performTasks = true;

protected void onHandleIntent(Intent intent) {
   Bundle intentInfo = intent.getBundle();
   if (this.performTasks) {
      // Then handle the intent...
   }
}

Otherwise, the Service will do it's task of processing that Intent. That's how it was meant to be used, because I can't quite see how you could solve it otherwise if you look at the core code.