How to execute background task when Android app is closed / set to background?

Question

My Android 4+ app is connected to a custom web service that is used to sync data every few minutes. To make sure, that the online data is always up to date, I want to trigge

Answer 1

The following code will help you to post your contents when your app is closed or in the background:

import android.app.Service;
import android.content.Intent;
import android.os.Binder;
import android.os.Handler;
import android.os.IBinder;
import android.widget.Toast;

public class SendDataService extends Service {
    private final LocalBinder mBinder = new LocalBinder();
    protected Handler handler;
    protected Toast mToast;
 
    public class LocalBinder extends Binder {
        public SendDataService getService() {
            return SendDataService .this;
        }
    }

    @Override
    public IBinder onBind(Intent intent) {
        return mBinder;
    }

    @Override
    public void onCreate() {
        super.onCreate();

    }

    @Override
    public void onDestroy() {
        super.onDestroy();
    }

    @Override
    public int onStartCommand(Intent intent, int flags, int startId) {
        handler = new Handler();
        handler.post(new Runnable() {
            @Override
            public void run() { 

// write your code to post content on server
            }
        });
        return android.app.Service.START_STICKY;
    }

}

More explanation of my code is:

Service runs in the background even if your application is in the background, but remember, it always runs on the main thread, because of which I created a separate thread to perform your background operations.

Service is started as a sticky one, as even if because of any reason your service got destroyed in the background it will automatically get restarted.

More details can be found here: https://developer.android.com/guide/components/services.html

And to check if your app is in the foreground/background, the following code will help:

  private boolean isAppOnForeground(Context context) {
    ActivityManager activityManager = (ActivityManager) context.getSystemService(Context.ACTIVITY_SERVICE);
    List appProcesses = activityManager.getRunningAppProcesses();
    if (appProcesses == null) {
      return false;
    }
    final String packageName = context.getPackageName();
    for (RunningAppProcessInfo appProcess : appProcesses) {
      if (appProcess.importance == RunningAppProcessInfo.IMPORTANCE_FOREGROUND && appProcess.processName.equals(packageName)) {
        return true;
      }
    }
    return false;
  }
}

// Use like this:
boolean foregroud = new ForegroundCheckTask().execute(context).get();

Happy Coding!!!!