Working with Intents and Pending Intents in Flutter

Working with Intents and Pending Intents in Flutter

Intents are a powerful way to pass data between different parts of an app on Android, and with the help of PendingIntents they can also be used to communicate with other apps. In this tutorial, we will be taking a look at how to use both Intents and PendingIntents in Flutter.

What are Intents?

An Intent is an asynchronous message that can contain data and is used to invoke a particular action. Intents provide a structured way of sending messages between components, allowing them to work together without having to know about each other. As such, they are a key component of the Android operating system.

What are PendingIntents?

PendingIntents are a special type of Intent that allow an application to send an action to some other application or component. Unlike normal Intents, PendingIntents have the ability to persist outside of the scope of the current application. This makes them ideal for communicating between applications or components, and for creating notifications that will remain active even when the application isn’t running.

Using Intents in Flutter

Using Intents in Flutter is relatively straightforward. To start, create a new Intent object and set the relevant action, data, type, and/or category:

Intent intent = new Intent(); intent.setAction(Intent.ACTION_VIEW); intent.setData(Uri.parse("http://example.com")); intent.setType("text/plain"); 

Next, you can use the startActivity() method to launch the Intent:

startActivity(intent);

Using PendingIntents in Flutter

PendingIntents are slightly more complex, as they require you to create a PendingIntent object. To do this, use the getActivity(), getService(), or getBroadcast() methods with a Context, request code, and Intent object as parameters:

PendingIntent pendingIntent = PendingIntent.getActivity(context, 0, intent, PendingIntent.FLAG_UPDATE_CURRENT);

Once you have created a valid PendingIntent object, you can use the same startActivity() method as before to launch it:

startActivity(pendingIntent);

Conclusion

In this tutorial, we have seen how to work with Intents and PendingIntents in Flutter. Intents are a powerful way to pass data between different parts of an app, while PendingIntents allow the app to communicate with other apps. With the use of these two components, a wide variety of powerful features can be added to a Flutter app.