But that would become tedious and error prone very quickly. One way to build this app, of course, would be to write this whole thing from scratch. We'll examine several variations of this app throughout the course.

Consider an image download app that downloads an image from a remote web server and displays it to the user. A black box is a component that only needs to be understood by its interface and not by its implementation. App development is therefore simplified since existing components can e reused as black boxes. Intents are essentially the glue that helps to integrate Android apps. More over Activity1 and App1 uses and intent to start a service it interacts with in App2. LIkewise, activity two and app one uses an intent to interact with a receiver component in app three. In app one, activity one request functionality from activity two using an intent.

For example, this diagram illustrates three Apps: App1, App2, App3 and a number of components in those Apps. Let's start by talking about how Android intents can be used to integrate components An intent is a message that one component uses to interact with or request functionality from other components. We'll show plenty of code examples later in this module. This part of the lesson just focuses on concept's, rather than on code. And you also recognize methods used to launch Android components via intents. By the time you complete this part of the lesson you'll know how intents allow the integration of apps that interact with or request functionality from other components.

There's several learning objectives in this part of the lesson. Which are a key part of the overall Android component framework.

This lesson provides an overview of Android intents. Welcome to the first part of the first lesson in our module on Android intents.

Android studio intent open website