What is the difference between an IntentService and a Service

Question

Can you please help me understand what the difference between an IntentService and a Service is

User · Answer

Service  Works in the main thread so it will cause an ANR  Android Not Responding  after a few seconds   IntentService  Service with another background thread working separately to do something without interacting with the main thread

User · Answer

Service   Task with no UI but should not use for long Task  Use Thread within service for long Task Invoke by onStartService   Triggered from any Thread Runs On Main Thread May block main UI  thread   IntentService   Long task usually no communication with main thread if communication is needed then it is done by Handler or broadcast Invoke via Intent triggered from Main Thread  Intent is received on main Thread and worker thread is spawned  Runs on separate thread We can t run task in parallel and multiple intents are Queued on the same worker thread

User · Answer

Service is a base class of service implementation  Service runs on the application s main thread which may reduce the application performance  Thus  IntentService  which is a direct subclass of Service is available to make things easier   The IntentService is used to perform a certain task in the background  Once done  the instance of IntentService terminates itself automatically  Examples for its usage would be to download a certain resource from the Internet   Differences   Service class uses the application s main thread  while IntentService creates a worker thread and uses that thread to run the service  IntentService creates a queue that passes one intent at a time to onHandleIntent    Thus  implementing a multi-thread should be made by extending Service class directly  Service class needs a manual stop using stopSelf    Meanwhile  IntentService automatically stops itself when it finishes execution   IntentService implements onBind   that returns null  This means that the IntentService can not be bound by default  IntentService implements onStartCommand   that sends Intent to queue and to onHandleIntent      In brief  there are only two things to do to use IntentService  Firstly  to implement the constructor  And secondly  to implement onHandleIntent    For other callback methods  the super is needed to be called so that it can be tracked properly

User · Answer

In short  a Service is a broader implementation for the developer to set up background operations  while an IntentService is useful for  fire and forget  operations  taking care of background Thread creation and cleanup   From the docs   Service A Service is an application component representing either an application s desire to perform a longer-running operation while not interacting with the user or to supply functionality for other applications to use   IntentService Service is a base class for IntentService Services that handle asynchronous requests  expressed as Intents  on demand  Clients send requests through startService Intent  calls  the service is started as needed  handles each Intent in turn using a worker thread  and stops itself when it runs out of work   Refer this doc - http   developer android com reference android app IntentService html

User · Answer

See Tejas Lagvankar s post about this subject  Below are some key differences between Service and IntentService and other components

User · Answer

service  It runs in the background on your system  For example     If you went to a hotel and you give your order for a soup to a server The server gets your order and sends to chef You don t know how the soup is made in the kitchen and what processes are required for making the soup Once your order is ready  the server brings you the soup    background process  chef making soup  IntentService - it s consecutive service    i e  when you order many food items at a time to server but the server delivers those items one by one and not deliver them all at once

User · Answer

Service runs actually in the same thread of your app  when you extends Service  you must manually spawn new threads to run CPU blocking operations   vs  IntentService is a subclass of Service which spawns a thread to do background work from there No need to create a new thread to do CPU blocking operations

User · Answer

Intent service is child of Service  IntentService  If you want to download a bunch of images at the start of opening your app  It s a one-time process and can clean itself up once everything is downloaded   Service  A Service which will constantly be used to communicate between your app and back-end with web API calls  Even if it is finished with its current task  you still want it to be around a few minutes later  for more communication

[android] What is the difference between an IntentService and a Service?

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