android - Android Is it posible to get an Activity's preference value from a Service?

Question

Given that a Service may be running even when the launching activity is destroyed,
and also that data is passed usually using the extra bundle along the intent,
I wonder if the Service is able to directly access the activity's preferences.

My guess is no, it cannot. But it would save me writing a chunk of code if it can do it.

Answer 1

Assuming that You're asking about SharedPreferences. If so, then documentation is clear (by link above):

Note: currently this class does not support use across multiple processes. This will be added later.

So, currently, if Your service is running in a separate process it's not possible. In that case I would suggest to store Your preferences not in a SharedPreferences, but in some base which could be accessible via specific ContentProvider.

P.S. Actually I tried access SharedPreferences from multiple processes and it has worked (at least in my case), but I've decided to use another way because of the documentation mentioned in the answer.

Answer 2

If you mean SharedPreferences then you can just call getSharedPreferences with the same name.