BroadcastReceiver vs Service

Well, in android, what is the difference between doing something in broadcastReceiver and calli开发者_开发知识库ng another service in broadcastReceiver? I think they both run in background,right?

Actually, what I what to do is:

In certain time of everyday, download the user event(eg: 9:00 am eat breakfast) from database, and set up the AlarmManager to show notification about the event.

Now I set up a alarm manager to do the above task. And I am puzzled should I directly accomplish this in BroadcastReceiver or call service in BroadcastReceiver to accomplish this.

Thank You.

You should do as LITTLE processing in a BroadcastReceiver as possible because (quoting from the Android Blog)

When handling a broadcast, the application is given a fixed set of time (currently 10 seconds) in which to do its work. If it doesn't complete in that time, the application is considered to be misbehaving, and its process immediately tossed into the background state to be killed for memory if needed.

You definitelly should call a service from the receiver for this purpose, if your action takes some longer time (connecting to the internet can take some). Broadcast receivers are limited by maximum amount of time, they have to finish.

Process Lifecycle

A process that is currently executing a BroadcastReceiver (that is, currently running the code in its onReceive(Context, Intent) method) is considered to be a foreground process and will be kept running by the system except under cases of extreme memory pressure.

Once you return from onReceive(), the BroadcastReceiver is no longer active, and its hosting process is only as important as any other application components that are running in it. This is especially important because if that process was only hosting the BroadcastReceiver (a common case for applications that the user has never or not recently interacted with), then upon returning from onReceive() the system will consider its process to be empty and aggressively kill it so that resources are available for other more important processes.

This means that for longer-running operations you will often use a Service in conjunction with a BroadcastReceiver to keep the containing process active for the entire time of your operation.

from: BroadcastReceiver