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[MUSIC]

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Hello I'm Ben and I'd like to help
you be a better communicator.

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Well what I mean is I'd like
to get you better at sharing.

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Wait that's not right.

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Let's try this again.

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I'd like to show you how to share
data in Android in ways that

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seamlessly integrate your apps with
other apps in the Android system.

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Listen, communication is hard.

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Lucky for us though,
communication in Android is pretty easy

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thanks to a wonderful
invention called Intents.

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You're hopefully pretty familiar with
the concept of Intents at this point.

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If not, I'd urge you to check
the teacher's notes for prerequisites and

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related material here at Treehouse
that you should check out.

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We'll review all the basics, but

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we'll also dive deeper and
look at special cases.

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So don't worry if at first this
feels like stuff you already know.

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All right, so let's review
what we do know about Intents.

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The name itself is a big clue,

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the Android Intents are objects that
we can use to express our intentions.

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For example, when we intend to start a new
activity or service, we create an Intent

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or maybe we intend to share some data in
another app like Facebook or WhatsApp.

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We use Intents in that case too but we
configure them a little bit differently.

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The thing to remember is that Intents
are all about passing information around.

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We can pass all sorts of data,
in all sorts of ways.

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Text, dates, images, complex data models,
Intents can handle it all.

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And we can use Intents to communicate to
all sorts of things in the Android system.

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Inside of our own app we can share
data from one activity to another,

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from an activity to a service, or
from a service back to an activity.

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But it doesn't end there, we can also use
Intents to share data with another app or

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to broadcast it system-wide.

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We can also listen for
system-wide broadcasts.

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Let's say we're working on an app
that can handle phone calls.

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The system takes care of
the low-level details of sending and

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receiving phone calls.

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But it broadcasts the data about a call
in a way that we can listen for and

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do something about.

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We listen for these system wide
broadcasts using something called

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a broadcast receiver.

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We have a great example
app to work from here.

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You may have worked on the MusicMachine
app in a previous course.

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But if not, don't worry, we're going to
download a new version in the next video

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that contains a few minor new things.

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This app plays a simple song
using a background service but

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we will extend it to demonstrate
these different ways of sharing data.

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We're going to work our way
through this list of examples.

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We already know how to do some
of these types of sharing.

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But we'll review those and then pave
our way forward with new examples.

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Notice that device to device
communication was left off of that list.

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That requires sending data over
the network and either pulling it from or

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pushing it to another device.

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That's beyond the scope of this course but
check the teachers notes for

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more information.

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All right it's time to get started.

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I intend to have lots of fun.

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It's going to be great.