51.2 Explicit Intents

An explicit intent requests the launch of a specific activity by referencing the component name (which is actually the class name) of the target activity. This approach is most common when launching an activity residing in the same application as the sending activity (since the class name is known to the application developer).

An explicit intent is issued by creating an instance of the Intent class, passing through the activity context and the component name of the activity to be launched. A call is then made to the startActivity() method, passing the intent object as an argument. For example, the following code fragment issues an intent for the activity with the class name ActivityB to be launched:

Intent i = new Intent(this, ActivityB.class);

startActivity(i);

Data may be transmitted to the receiving activity by adding it to the intent object before it is started via calls to the putExtra() method of the intent object. Data must be added in the...