Can Webview Be Used Inside A Service?

I have an app that checks a specific website every one minute to see if it finds whatever I am looking for, then notifies me (Plays Sound) whenever the item is found. I followed th

Solution 1:

Yes, a service runs in the background and should not able able to display any UI.

But you can have an Activity (a UI process) passed its context to a service using PendingIntent.getService(context, GET_ADSERVICE_REQUEST_CODE, ...). Then when the service is ready to display, the lines below should launch browser (or you owner app with appropriate Intent Filter for own WebView) to display the web content.

Intenti=newIntent(Intent.ACTION_VIEW, url);
PendingIntentcontentIntent= PendingIntent.getActivity(this, 0, i,
        Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK);

Solution 2:

No, a WebView should not be used inside a service, and it really doesn't make sense to, anyway. If you're loading your WebView with the intention of scraping the html contained in it, you might as well just run an HttpGet request, like this --

publicstatic String readFromUrl( String url ) {
    Stringresult=null;

    HttpClientclient=newDefaultHttpClient();

    HttpGetget=newHttpGet( url ); 

    HttpResponse response;
    try {
        response = client.execute( get );
        HttpEntityentity= response.getEntity();
        if (entity != null) {
            InputStreamis= entity.getContent();
            BufferedReaderreader=newBufferedReader(
                                        newInputStreamReader( is ) );
            StringBuildersb=newStringBuilder();

            Stringline=null;
            try {
                while( ( line = reader.readLine() ) != null )
                    sb.append( line + "\n" );
            } catch ( IOException e ) {
                Log.e( "readFromUrl", e.getMessage() );
            } finally {
                try {
                    is.close();
                } catch ( IOException e ) {
                    Log.e( "readFromUrl", e.getMessage() );
                }
            }

            result = sb.toString();
            is.close();
        }


    } catch( Exception e ) {
        Log.e( "readFromUrl", e.getMessage() );
    }

    return result;
}

Solution 3:

Yes, you can use a static Webview from another activity of your project. for example: MainActivity.web2.loadUrl ( "" ); in your Service.