Android activity intent


Activity Intent


The Android framework has multiple components within it. This includes content providers, services, broadcast receivers, activities, and many more components. The message which is passed between these components is termed an Android Intent. It primarily regulates the startActivity() method, which is used for invoking the activity and broadcasting to the receivers. In simple words, we can tell that Activity Intent intends to perform a particular action or activity. Some of the actions performed by the intents are:

  • Starting a service.
  • Launching a specific activity.
  • Displaying a specific web page.
  • Broadcasting a message.
  • Displaying the contact list.

Intents can be classified into two different types, Implicit Extent and Explicit Intent.

Activity Intent


It defines which application is required to satisfy the intent by providing either the target app's package name or an entirely qualified component name of the class. It might be possible that you can typically practice an explicit intent to begin a component in your app because you identify the class name of any activity or service you aspire to begin. For example, you can begin a new activity within the app in response to a user action or even begin service to get a file in the background.

Implicit intents:


It does not identify a particular component but rather represents a general action to perform, enabling any component from a different app to manage it. For example, suppose you aspire to display a location on a map. In that case, you might use an implicit intent to ask those different proficient apps to display a particularized location on a map.