Android daily repeating notification at specific t

Question

I need to the Android app to send notification to remind users at 8am, 3pm and 8pm every day. So I use the following three lines in onCreate() of the MainActivity, when the application starts. However, when I run the app, all three notification are coming at once instead of at the wanted time.

    setRepeatedNotification(1,8,0,0); 
    setRepeatedNotification(2,15,0,0); 
    setRepeatedNotification(3,20,0,0);    

Why is that? I also attach the setRepeatedNotification function here. Thank you!

private void setRepeatedNotification(int ID, int hh, int mm, int ss) {
    AlarmManager alarmManager = (AlarmManager) getSystemService(ALARM_SERVICE);
    Intent alarmIntent = new Intent(MainActivity.this, AlarmReceiver.class);
    PendingIntent pendingIntent = PendingIntent.getBroadcast(MainActivity.this, ID, alarmIntent, 0);

    Calendar calendar = Calendar.getInstance();
   // calendar.set();
    calendar.set(Calendar.HOUR_OF_DAY, hh);
    calendar.set(Calendar.MINUTE, mm);
    calendar.set(Calendar.SECOND, ss);

    // Clear previous everyday pending intent if exists.
    if (null != mEverydayPendingIntent) {
        alarmManager.cancel(mEverydayPendingIntent);
    }
    mEverydayPendingIntent = pendingIntent;
    alarmManager.setRepeating(AlarmManager.RTC, calendar.getTimeInMillis(), AlarmManager.INTERVAL_DAY, mEverydayPendingIntent);
}

Answer 1

I see two potential problems with your setup with AlarmManager. The first arises when the device goes to sleep.

From AlarmManager's documentation:

If an alarm is delayed (by system sleep, for example, for non _WAKEUP alarm types), a skipped repeat will be delivered as soon as possible. After that, future alarms will be delivered according to the original schedule; they do not drift over time. For example, if you have set a recurring alarm for the top of every hour but the phone was asleep from 7:45 until 8:45, an alarm will be sent as soon as the phone awakens, then the next alarm will be sent at 9:00.

As you can see, if you've set an alarm and the device has gone to sleep, without using AlarmManager.RTC_WAKEUP there could be a long delay depending on how long the device has been in sleep for. If you've never touched your device and no other alarms caused a wakeup, it could cause all your alarms to stack up upon the next hour that the device is awake for.

---

Another potential issue I see is that you are retrieving a Calendar instance representing the time right now, but then setting the hour, minute and second by yourself. The current day and the current year have been automatically populated from the current time.

Again, from the documentation (emphasis mine):

If the stated trigger time is in the past, the alarm will be triggered immediately, with an alarm count depending on how far in the past the trigger time is relative to the repeat interval.

In this case, if your method was invoked past 8 pm on the given day, calendar.getTimeInMillis() will return a timestamp in the past for all three alarms, causing them to be triggered immediately since 8 am, 3 pm and 8 pm have already past in that day. In this case, you must first evaluate whether the current time is past the alarm interval you are trying to set and add 1 day more onto the time you are setting to make sure the alarm has been set in the future.

Answer 2

Here is the updated code:

private void setRepeatedNotification(int ID, int hh, int mm, int ss) {
    AlarmManager alarmManager = (AlarmManager) getSystemService(ALARM_SERVICE);
    Intent alarmIntent = new Intent(StartActivity.this, AlarmReceiver.class);
    alarmIntent.putExtra("ID",ID);
    Log.d("setRepeatedNotification", "ID:" + ID);
    PendingIntent pendingIntent = PendingIntent.getBroadcast(StartActivity.this, ID, alarmIntent, PendingIntent.FLAG_UPDATE_CURRENT);

    Calendar calendar = Calendar.getInstance();
    Calendar now = Calendar.getInstance();
    calendar.set(Calendar.HOUR_OF_DAY, hh);
    calendar.set(Calendar.MINUTE, mm);
    calendar.set(Calendar.SECOND, ss);

    //check whether the time is earlier than current time. If so, set it to tomorrow. Otherwise, all alarms for earlier time will fire

    if(calendar.before(now)){
        calendar.add(Calendar.DATE, 1);
    }

    mEverydayPendingIntent = pendingIntent;
    alarmManager.setRepeating(AlarmManager.RTC_WAKEUP, calendar.getTimeInMillis(), AlarmManager.INTERVAL_DAY, mEverydayPendingIntent);



}