hello, Craig!

how can I help you today?

Hey. I need to broadcast notifications at user-defined times. What is the best way to do that? I tried setting up an array of BraodCastReceivers, but only the last one fired.

do you mean that there are N times with one broadcast per time?

or there is one time with N broadcasts?

There are n broadcasts to go off at different times during the same day.

have one "manager" BroadcastReceiver that is triggered by AlarmManager

have that BroadcastReceiver send the N broadcasts

though I am rather confused why you're doing any of this

These are for notifications that the user defines like when to take your pills during the day

then what is a "broadcast" Notification?

don't you mean a Notification?

sans "broadcast"?

I thought that the notifications would be triggered by a broadcastreceiver

Is that the right approach?

they *could* be, but there is no technical requirement that a Notification be raised by a BroadcastReceiver

so, to recap: at various times in the day, you want to raise various Notifications -- correct?

yes

OK

particularly given Android's move away from exact repeating alarms starting in Android 4.4, you probably have one BroadcastReceiver, triggered by one alarm in AlarmManager

that alarm would be scheduled using setExact() (API Level 19+) or set() (API Level 18 and below)

and it would be scheduled for the nearest time when you need to raise a Notification

So would I have one alarm for each notification time?

the BroadcastReceiver that is triggered by the alarm would raise the Notification for that event, plus call setExact() or set() for scheduling itself for the next event

no, you would have one alarm, period

at any point in time, you would have one outstanding alarm, for whenever the next Notification is supposed to be raised

OK. I understand now.

Android offers repeating alarms, which in theory would be good for at least some of your notifications (e.g., "take your pills at 8am each day"), but Android 4.4+ with targetSdkVersion of 19+ no longer allows exact repeating alarms

instead, they are all inexact, and will go off sometime around when you ask, but not necessarily all that close

for periodic work that is not "in the face" of the user, inexactness is great, as it can consume less power

for something like this, you'll want exact alarms, and so I'm steering people to do that manually using setExact()/set()

OK. Thanks. I see that our chat is scrolling off the top of the screen. Is that an archive available after the chat?

I post the transcript shortly after the chat ends

though you should be able to scroll upwards to see everything since you signed into the chat

Thanks. I read the section in the book on AlarmManager. There are a lot of options (not your fault)!

yeah, they *really* want developers to move away from exact alarms, which made things more complicated starting with Android 4.4

and, now there's JobScheduler (which is also inexact and therefore not especially useful for your situation)

BTW, Version 6.2 of the book was released an hour or two ago

if you haven't done so, be sure to download your copy

Cool! I will definitely get it.

Thanks

and that's a wrap for today's chat

the next chat is next Monday, at 7:30pm US Eastern

have a pleasant day!

thank you.