Getting packages from PackageManager

Question

I'm writing an app, that has a somewhat modular system. It has a core app, and some apps, that consist of a single Service, that implements the desired interface. I followed the guide to create the IPC communication. But now I need to get all the services, installed on the system, that my core app can wotk with. How do I do this? I mean, is there any way to mark my Service apps with some kind of a tag, and then filter results, presented by the PackageManager#getInstalledPackages() based on that tag value? What's the common practice of doing so?

Answer 1

Create a custom Intent to which your activities will respond. You can then use PackageManager.queryIntentServices to get your list of matching services. You can get the package info, etc. from the information embedded in the ResolveInfos.

Ideally you'd actually use these intents for invoking the services, but you could always just use them as identification tags and fall back on the binding mechanism you were using before.