Android: Account Manager: Step by Step

This is the second page of Android: Account Manager: Step by Step

Implement an Authenticator service

The authentication service extends the abstract android.app.Service class. An android service forms a component of the main application that signals to Android that the application wants to preform some task that may be long running or not necessarily require user interaction. One example could be a synchronization or in our case authentication. The documentation states that a service can be used by other applications so in our case we are going to have Android's Account manager connect to our application to fetch the users online account details. 

Create a new class that extends the android.app.Service class.

Implement the onBind method to return an instance member of your AccountAuthenticator. 

package au.com.finalconcept.tutorial.android;

import android.app.Service;
import android.content.Intent;
import android.os.IBinder;

public class AuthenticatationService extends Service {
  @Override
  public IBinder onBind(Intent intent) {
	// TODO Auto-generated method stub
	return new AccountAuthenticator(this).getIBinder();
  }

}

This class is called by Android when the user clicks on your Account Authenticator in Android's Account Manager.

For now it will simply return back the account list when clicked. 

Create the account authenticator xml

Create a new xml file in the res/xml directory called "authenticator.xml" with the following content

Thanks: to Marko for pointing out the typo with android:smallicon and android:accounttype. The below code has been updated

Change the label to use your own label stored in your strings.xml.

If you want your application to have preferences add the following line

android:accountPreferences="@xml/account_preferences" 

For more information on preferences please read Android: Application Preferences

Register the service in the AndroidManifest.xml

The 5th and final part to getting your Account Authenticator to display in Android's Account Manager is to register the the Authenticator Service with Android. This is done by adding the following lines to your AndroidManifest.xml file.

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