Hm, I think you end up with unnecessary code duplication if you include your component / content provider in every application.
I think it would be better if every application that wants to use your component shows a small dialog "You need to install the following component..." with a button that brings you to the download page of the Market for your component. There are various ways when to show this dialog box (catch the ActivityNotFoundException if you try to launch an activity of your component, or use the PackageManager to check if a desired component exists to handle the request). At OpenIntents we try to resolve dependencies as late as possible - i.e. not at installation time, but the first time the user actually wants to use a particular feature (they may never use it in which case there is no need to install it). I think in the long run Market should have better tools for resolving compulsory dependencies automatically, but for the moment I think this is a good compromise for developers and end users. Peli www.openintents.org www.openintents.biz On Jan 8, 4:18 pm, whitemice <[email protected]> wrote: > I’ve blogged this question with pictures here:http://tinyurl.com/9hwdva > > I am writing a component that makes certain functionality available to > any application running on an Android device (e.g. an advertising > service, stock ticker cache, Snowball server, etc). > > This functionality is useful for application developers, but not > interesting to actual users i.e. my component should be included as > part of a new application, but not require the end user to explicitly > install the additional component themselves. > > I expect that over time multiple applications installed on the phone > will want to communicate with my component. As each new application > will have a different certificate, I want to communicate between > applications using an Android Content Provider. To save resources on > the device (networking, caching, etc) only one instance of my > component should be appointed to handle all queries. > > This works well as Android only registers the first Content Provider > for a given URI and then ignores the rest (throwing an “WARN/ > PackageManager: Skipping provider name xxxx name already used” error > each time a new one is installed). > > However if the registered Content Provider is uninstalled, it will > immediately break all the other applications that rely on it, even > though other instances of the component still exist. > > Questions: > - Does anyone have any suggestions on how to better handle this > situation? > - If I could reregister Content Providers I could handle situations > like this, and upgrade components when newer versions are installed. > Perhaps the Android OS could also handle this situation better, by > tracking Content Provider naming collisions? > - Should I be looking at other communication methods to solve this > issue? --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Developers" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
