Passing a variable from Activity to a running Service?

[Sean Michael Hayes]

What would be the best way of accomplishing this? The service is started on start-up of the application when the first activity loads. But later on in the application in a different specific activity I want to pass a variable to the service? I am new to services in Android and am wondering if anyone could point me in the right direction?

[Ulf Dittmer]

You would send an Intent to it that is targeted at its precise class. Something like this in the Activity:

	Intent intent = new Intent("com.hayes.android.MyService");
	intent.putExtra("MyService.data", "myValue");
	startService(intent);

and in the Service:

	@Override 
	public int onStartCommand (Intent intent, int flags, int startId) {
		if (intent.getAction().equals("com.hayes.android.MyService")) {
			String value = intent.getStringExtra("MyService.data");
			// do something with the value here
		} else {
			Log.d(MY_TAG, "Received intent with action="+intent.getAction()+"; now what?");
		}
		return START_NOT_STICKY;
	}