sending message from IntentService to Activity

Question

I have an activity and an intentService in the same application. The service must keep running after the activity ends so I do not want to bind. I have been googling for h

Answer 1

For the record I'll answer my own question as it might be useful to others... (I'm using a regular Service, not an IntentService as it needs to stay active)

For the activity to receive messages from the service, it has to instantiate a Handler as so...

   private Handler handler = new Handler() 
{
    public void handleMessage(Message message) 
    {
        Object path = message.obj;

        if (message.arg1 == 5 && path != null)
        {
            String myString = (String) message.obj;
            Gson gson = new Gson();
            MapPlot mapleg = gson.fromJson(myString, MapPlot.class);
            String astr = "debug";
            astr = astr + " ";
        }
    };
};

The above code consists of my debug stuff. The service sends the message to the activity as so...

                MapPlot mapleg = new MapPlot();
            mapleg.fromPoint = LastGeoPoint;
            mapleg.toPoint = nextGeoPoint;              
            Gson gson = new Gson();
            String jsonString = gson.toJson(mapleg); //convert the mapleg class to a json string
            debugString = jsonString;

            //send the string to the activity
            Messenger messenger = (Messenger) extras.get("MESSENGER");
            Message msg = Message.obtain();  //this gets an empty message object

            msg.arg1 = 5;
            msg.obj = jsonString;
            try
            {
                messenger.send(msg);
            }
            catch (android.os.RemoteException e1)
            {
                Log.w(getClass().getName(), "Exception sending message", e1);
            }               

I just picked the number 5, for now, as the message identifier. In this case I'm passing a complex class in a json string and then reconstrucing it in the activity.