Starting app in background when beaconmanager is bound

Question

I have trouble with showing my app on region entered, I followed the sample here. It works when I don't bind the BeaconManager to my Activty, but when I do, I get the logs from the Activity not from the Application and the app doesn't show up although it's not visible.

So the question is, can I use a class extends Application implements BootstrapNotifier for starting the app in background and a class extends AppCompatActivity implements BeaconConsumer to handle monitoring/ranging or do I need to handle everything in the application class because binding it in the activity fails the background launch?

(Sorry for the bad code block, I just can't handle this stackoverflow code thing correctly)

    public class BeaconActivity extends AppCompatActivity implements BeaconConsumer {

    protected final String TAG = "BeaconActivity";
    private BeaconManager beaconManager;

    @Override
    protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        Log.d(TAG, "onCreate()");
        setContentView(R.layout.activity_beacon);
        Toolbar toolbar = (Toolbar) findViewById(R.id.toolbar);
        setSupportActionBar(toolbar);

       RangedBeacon.setSampleExpirationMilliseconds(8000);
       beaconManager = BeaconManager.getInstanceForApplication(this);
       beaconManager.bind(this);
    }

    @Override
    protected void onDestroy() {
        super.onDestroy();
        Log.d(TAG, "Unbind Beaconmanager");
        beaconManager.unbind(this);
    }

    @Override
    public void onBeaconServiceConnect() {
        beaconManager.setMonitorNotifier(new MonitorNotifier() {
            @Override
            public void didEnterRegion(final Region region) {
                Log.d(TAG, "Enter Region identifier: " + region.getId1() + ", " + region.getId2() + ", " + region.getId3());
            }

            @Override
            public void didExitRegion(final Region region) {
                Log.d(TAG, "Exit Region identifier: " + region.getId1() + ", " + region.getId2() + ", " + region.getId3());
            }

            @Override
            public void didDetermineStateForRegion(int state, Region region) {

            }
        });

        beaconManager.setRangeNotifier(new RangeNotifier() {
            @Override
            public void didRangeBeaconsInRegion(Collection<Beacon> beacons, Region region) {
                for (final Beacon beacon : beacons) {
                    final String distance = new DecimalFormat("##.######").format(beacon.getDistance());
                    Log.d(TAG, "Distance: " + distance + ". This beacon has identifiers:" + beacon.getId1() + ", " + beacon.getId2() + ", " + beacon.getId3());
                }
            }
        });

        try {
            Region region = new Region("all", null, null, null);
            beaconManager.startMonitoringBeaconsInRegion(all);
            beaconManager.startRangingBeaconsInRegion(all);
        } catch (RemoteException e) {
        }
    }
}



public class BeaconApplication extends Application implements BootstrapNotifier {

        private static final String TAG = "BeaconApplication";
        private RegionBootstrap regionBootstrap;

        @Override
        public void onCreate() {
            super.onCreate();
            Log.d(TAG, "App started up");
            BeaconManager beaconManager = BeaconManager.getInstanceForApplication(this);
            beaconManager.getBeaconParsers().add(new BeaconParser().
                    setBeaconLayout("m:2-3=0215,i:4-19,i:20-21,i:22-23,p:24-24,d:25-25"));

            Region all = new Region("all", null, null, null);
            regionBootstrap = new RegionBootstrap(this, all);
        }

        @Override
        public void didEnterRegion(Region region) {
            Log.d(TAG, "Enter region " + region.getUniqueId());
    //        regionBootstrap.disable();
            Intent intent = new Intent(this, BeaconActivity.class);
            intent.setFlags(Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK);
            this.startActivity(intent);
        }

        @Override
        public void didExitRegion(Region region) {
            Log.d(TAG, "Exit region " + region.getUniqueId());
        }

        @Override
        public void didDetermineStateForRegion(int i, Region region) {
        }
    }

Edit: I think I might just screwed up a little. Explained here the app only launches if killed (not in task switcher anymore). If it's available in task switcher it just handles the incoming events in the background, that's why I get the activity logs.

Answer 1

The problem is that you can only have one monitorNotifier for your application. The RegionBootstrap class sets one internally, and uses it to get callbacks to your Application class.

The code shown above changes the monitorNotifier here:

public void onBeaconServiceConnect() {
    beaconManager.setMonitorNotifier(new MonitorNotifier() {
...

After that line executes, the RegionBootstrap won't get any more callbacks on entry/exit events, and nor will the Application class. So the problem isn't the bind() call, it's the setMonitorNotifier call.

The library does not allow multiple monitorNotifiers, so if you want to keep using the RegionBootstrap you have to refactor your code so that you get all of the entry/exit events in your Application class and somehow pass them off to your Activity.