Setting up the IMediaPlaybackService for Android.

Question

Hello all,

I'm having trouble with the IMediaPlaybackService for Android. I'm told that all I need to do is place it into its package (in this case, com.android.music), however I can't get my project to build when I do this. The code for IMediaPlaybackService is as follows:

/* //device/samples/SampleCode/src/com/android/samples/app/RemoteServiceInterface.java
**
** Copyright 2007, The Android Open Source Project
**
** Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); 
** you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. 
** You may obtain a copy of the License at 
**
**     http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0 
**
** Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software 
** distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, 
** WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. 
** See the License for the specific language governing permissions and 
** limitations under the License.
*/

package com.android.music;

interface IMediaPlaybackService
{
    void openFile(String path, boolean oneShot);
    void openFileAsync(String path);
    void open(in long [] list, int position);
    int getQueuePosition();
    boolean isPlaying();
    void stop();
    void pause();
    void play();
    void prev();
    void next();
    long duration();
    long position();
    long seek(long pos);
    String getTrackName();
    String getAlbumName();
    long getAlbumId();
    String getArtistName();
    long getArtistId();
    void enqueue(in long [] list, int action);
    long [] getQueue();
    void moveQueueItem(int from, int to);
    void setQueuePosition(int index);
    String getPath();
    long getAudioId();
    void setShuffleMode(int shufflemode);
    int getShuffleMode();
    int removeTracks(int first, int last);
    int removeTrack(long id);
    void setRepeatMode(int repeatmode);
    int getRepeatMode();
    int getMediaMountedCount();
}

However there appear to be several problems that prevent me from building my project with this file:

• The "in" keywords are causing Eclipse to give an error. The exact error is: Syntax error on token "long", delete this token. I'm not sure why there are "in" keywords there. They don't appear to be keywords in Java, what are they?
• Another error that occurs is The type com.android.music.IMediaPlaybackService is not visible, which is remedied by making the interface public.
• The final error is Stub cannot be resolved or is not a field. when I execute this line of code: this.mService = IMediaPlaybackService.Stub.asInterface(service); because there is not a Stub in IMediaPlaybackService.

Others seem to have been able to overcome these problems with ease, so what am I missing? It's probably something simple that I'm not seeing, but I've been wrestling with this for longer than I should have. Do I need to mess with my project setup?

Thanks in advance!

Regards, celestialorb.

EDIT:

So I've been able to build my project, but now I'm having issues with the service itself. Here is the code for my MediaPlayerServiceConnection class:

import android.content.ComponentName;
import android.content.ServiceConnection;
import android.os.IBinder;
import android.os.RemoteException;
import android.util.Log;

import com.android.music.IMediaPlaybackService;

public class MediaPlayerServiceConnection implements ServiceConnection {
    //  Tag for debugging.
    private static final String TAG = "MediaPlayerServiceConnection";

    //  The service.
    private IMediaPlaybackService mService;

    @Override
    public void onServiceConnected(ComponentName name, IBinder service) {
        Log.i(TAG, "MediaPlaybackService is connected!  Name: " + name.getClassName());

        //  This is the important line.
        this.mService = IMediaPlaybackService.Stub.asInterface(service);

        //  If all went well, then we can use the interface.
        try {
            Log.i(TAG, "Current track: " + this.mService.getTrackName());
            Log.i(TAG, "Artist: " + this.mService.getArtistName());
        } catch(RemoteException e) { e.printStackTrace(); }
    }

    @Override
    public void onServiceDisconnected(ComponentName name) {
        Log.i(TAG, "MediaPlaybackService disconnected!");
    }
}

...and here is the code in my activity that binds the service, but the onServiceConnected method is not being called, am I incorrectly trying to use the service?

//  TESTING MEDIAPLAYBACK SERVICE
Intent intent = new Intent();
intent.setClassName("com.android.music", "com.android.music.MediaPlaybackService");
MediaPlayerServiceConnection conn = new MediaPlayerServiceConnection();
this.bindService(intent, conn, Context.BIND_AUTO_CREATE);
//  END TEST