Sharing code between applications

Question

I want to create a "main" service/application which will provide different functionalities to other applications.

According to android docs I can use elements from an application/ service in other. "A central feature of Android is that one application can make use of elements of other applications (provided those applications permit it). ...". Is there any examples/documentation on this direction? TicTacToeMain/TicTacToeLib example is not helping me because it seems "TicTacToeLib" will be embedded in final TicTacToeMain apk file. Also I want to ask if is possible to detect if the "main" service/ application is missing (if is missing I want to tell user to install it, or to install it automatically).

Answer 1

There are two ways to achieve this cooperation of apps. One is a service the other one is via Intents to have a look on how the Barcode reader can be invoked by other apps have a look at the documentation of the zxing project page I think this is the most used real world example.