Can WebView be used inside a service?

Issue

I have an app that checks a specific website every one minute to see if it finds whatever I am looking for, then notifies me (Plays Sound) whenever the item is found. I followed this tut to make my app run in the background, but I noticed it complains about the WebView.

http://marakana.com/forums/android/examples/60.html

If it's not possible to use a WebView inside a service, what are my alternatives to achieve the same goal?

Solution

No, a WebView should not be used inside a service, and it really doesn't make sense to, anyway. If you're loading your WebView with the intention of scraping the html contained in it, you might as well just run an HttpGet request, like this --

public static String readFromUrl( String url ) {
    String result = null;

    HttpClient client = new DefaultHttpClient();

    HttpGet get = new HttpGet( url ); 

    HttpResponse response;
    try {
        response = client.execute( get );
        HttpEntity entity = response.getEntity();
        if (entity != null) {
            InputStream is = entity.getContent();
            BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(
                                        new InputStreamReader( is ) );
            StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();

            String line = null;
            try {
                while( ( line = reader.readLine() ) != null )
                    sb.append( line + "\n" );
            } catch ( IOException e ) {
                Log.e( "readFromUrl", e.getMessage() );
            } finally {
                try {
                    is.close();
                } catch ( IOException e ) {
                    Log.e( "readFromUrl", e.getMessage() );
                }
            }

            result = sb.toString();
            is.close();
        }


    } catch( Exception e ) {
        Log.e( "readFromUrl", e.getMessage() );
    }

    return result;
}

Answered By - 323go