A basic base activity and service for managing location in an Android app.

Using android-location-activity is as easy as including and starting the background service in the library.

The BackgroundLocationService provides a whole suite of useful methods (via callbacks).

To Use / Dependencies

compile('com.shiftconnects.android.location:location-service:1.3.0'){
    transitive=true
} 

If you do not wish to pull in our version of the Play Services, feel free to ignore the transitive=true flag. If you do this, you will need to provide your own versions of the play services dependencies...

compile 'com.google.android.gms:play-services-location:6.5.87'
compile 'com.google.android.gms:play-services-base:6.5.87'

Background services

android-location-activity a background service so that you can continue to update locations in a single location while users move around your app. To use this, ensure you have the service defined in your ApplicationManifest as such:

<service android:name="com.shiftconnects.android.location.BackgroundLocationService"
         android:exported="false">
    <intent-filter>
        <action android:name="com.shiftconnects.android.ACTION_GEOFENCE_TRANSITION"/>
    </intent-filter>
</service>

Getting Location Data

In order to retrieve location data, several callbacks exist on the service class. You will set these up after starting the service.

bindService(new Intent(this, BackgroundLocationService.class), mLocationManagerConnection, Context.BIND_AUTO_CREATE);

Inside your ServiceConnection object, you'll have access to the service in order to set callbacks.

private BackgroundLocationService mBackgroundLocationService;
private ServiceConnection mLocationManagerConnection = new ServiceConnection() {
    @Override
    public void onServiceConnected(ComponentName name, IBinder service) {
        Log.i(TAG, "Background location services connected");
        mBackgroundLocationService = ((BackgroundLocationService.LocalBinder)service).getBackgroundLocationService();
        mBackgroundLocationService.addConnectionCallbacks(LocationActivity.this);
        mBackgroundLocationService.addLocationCallbacks(LocationActivity.this);
    }

    @Override
    public void onServiceDisconnected(ComponentName name) {
        mBackgroundLocationService = null;
    }
};

Once you're notified via onLocationServicesConnectionSuccessful that the play services are connected in the connection callbacks, you can request location updates on the service by calling requestUpdates() and passing in your LocationRequest. Updated locations will arrive in onNewLocation().

Required Permissions

Since we are using the location, one or both of the location permissions must be declared in your manifest. Choose which one you like, or include both.

<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.ACCESS_FINE_LOCATION" />
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.ACCESS_COARSE_LOCATION" />