Control Android Media Player

I'm looking for a way to control the default Android media player from my own service. I'm NOT interested in playing media from my service or activity; I want to control the existing application, which consists of an activity (MediaPlaybackActivity.java) and more importantly a service (MediaPlaybackService.java) located in packages/apps/Music/src/com/android/music/. Ideally, I would like a solution that is independent of the version of Android.

I have figured out how to do pause/play/stop/next/previous operations using Intents. I can intercept track change events using a broadcast receiver. I can also get a list of playlists and the contents of each playlist. What I would like to be able to do is instruct the 开发者_C百科MediaPlaybackService to play a specific file/song. Again, I don't want to play this song in my application; I want the Android default media player to play it.

I have tried two approaches so far:

1. I imported the IMediaPlaybackService.aidl file from packages/apps/Music/src/com/android/music into my own application, and used this to bind to the MediaPlaybackService. On Froyo, this works great; I can pass a path to the openFile method, and the service will play the file. However, on Gingerbread, I get an error: Permission Denial: Accessing service ComponentInfo{com.google.android.music/com.android.music.MediaPlaybackService} from pid=17721, uid=10058 requires null. Finding a workaround to this error would be a good temporary solution, but it's not future-proof. This service may well change again in future versions of Android.

2. Starting the media player via an ACTION_VIEW Intent. This also works; however, as expected, the media player UI is brought to the front, which is not ideal.

   Intent intent = new Intent(android.content.Intent.ACTION_VIEW); intent.setDataAndType(someUri, "audio/mp3"); startActivity(intent);

Is there any other way to accomplish this? Is there an Intent I missed that would instruct the media player to play a specific song? Or alternatively, is there away to start an activity in the background, or to start an activity and immediately switch back to the previous one?

Sorry, there is no supported way to do this. All of the stuff you are describing is using private implementation details, and as you have seen is not robust. If you want to play music, you should do it in your own app.

I'm looking for a way to control the default Android media player from my own service.

There is no "default Android media player". The application you are referring to may exist on some devices and will not exist on others. AFAICT, few devices will have what you think is the "default Android media player" going forward -- those not already running proprietary media players from device manufacturers may have the new proprietary Google Music app.