How To Have An Alarm Trigger Hourly When App Closed

I have a birthday app that needs to check local SharedPreferences data once a day to see if somebody's birthday is that day. As of now, I am trying to do something supposedly simp

Solution 1:

You could use JobScheduler or AlarmManager perhaps to achieve your desired results. But what you should be using is WorkManager an abstraction of both depending on Android version.

WorkManager is highly configurable and will allow you to create a PeriodicWorkRequest or a OneTimeWorkRequest these are guaranteed to succeed. PeriodicWorkRequest will fire when you schedule the work, as well as when you have specified in the timer. It will execute in the background even if the app is closed or backgrounded. If you didn't want your task to execute immediately you can use a PWR(PeriodicWorkRequest) with a FlexInterval. See the docs below for more info.

WorkManager Docs

WorkManager Architecture

WorkmManager CodeLab

For example, I created two PeriodicWorkRequests that refresh services and keeps the user logged in always by renewing their token. When the user authenticates the PeriodicWorkRequest is created. In my case, I didn't need it to fire right away as they have just received and cached this information so I utilized the FlexInterval. When the app is backgrounded or closed, the workers continue to refresh services every 12 hours and refresh the token every 6. It works like a charm.

Here is an example:

Build Work:

overridefunbeginWork() {

        val periodicWorkRequest = PeriodicWorkRequest.Builder(
                MyWorker::class.java,
                REPEAT_INTERVAL, TimeUnit.MINUTES, // How often work should repeat// Flex not required.
                FLEX_INTERVAL, TimeUnit.MINUTES) // Limits execution into a time window
                .setConstraints(
                     Constraints.Builder().setRequiredNetworkType(
                                       NetworkType.CONNECTED).build())
                .addTag(MY_WORKER_TAG)
                .build()

        WorkManager.getInstance().enqueueUniquePeriodicWork(
                MY_UNIQUE_WORK,
                ExistingPeriodicWorkPolicy.KEEP,
                periodicLoginRequest)

Worker:

classMyWorker(context: Context, params: WorkerParameters) : Worker(context, params) {

    overridefundoWork(): Result {
            // DO WORK HERE

            Result.success()
        } else {
            // HANDLE FAILURE HERE
            Result.failure()
        }

The above is a simple implementation, but it should give you the general idea.