Does Google provide any Android tutorials that teach how to implement a Service?

Question

I apologize in advance for the "newbie" nature of this question.

Here is my predicament: I'm brand new to android and developing in general. I'm using android's SDK with eclipse Galileo. I've followed several tutorials to create different layouts. I've even learned recently how to use radio buttons and verify which ones were selected. Now I need to create a service that downloads and updates an xml file within the application. I've tried to locate a simple tutorial for services on Google's developer site but so far, so bad. If they exist could somebody point me in the right direction?

On the other hand, I've been told Google's tutorials are a little out dated. Is that true? If so, are there any other tutorials that would hand-hold (and possibly over-explain) how to use a service to a true newbie for free (like google)?

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Answer 1

Are you looking to upload/download local to the device or over a network connection?

Local File access should be covered by the Data Storage Tutorials The network connectivity portion of the dev guide is sparse (just lists the 2 main packages for network use), but a quick search on google finds what looks to be a good tutorial with source code: http://developerlife.com/tutorials/?p=288

Answer 2

There are several open source projects you can use as an examples

http://code.google.com/p/android-sky/source/browse/#svn/trunk/Sky

http://code.google.com/p/shelves/source/browse

http://code.google.com/p/apps-for-android/

and book by commonsware and examples to this book :

http://commonsware.com/

http://github.com/commonsguy

Answer 3

I would use Java's NIO for that.

A very good example (but maybe a bit complicated at first) in this test application. See these methods: download() and specifically fastChannelCopy().

You can look at a complete DownloadFile class of the very same technique here.

About the Service itself, others have pointed nice howto.