Google released the new Awareness API for everyone, a suite of signals concurring to gives the developer the context in which our user is, all as part of the Play Services 9.2.0, already available on Android devices around the globe.

This library combines 7 different feeds managing both the battery drain and the used memory, providing us with data such as user location, weather, time, headphones connection status, places, nearby beacons and currently performing activity.

INTRO

The Awareness API comes with two different versions, one is a callback based one (Fence API) and the other one is a polling based one (Snapshot API): while the first one will notify us when the conditions we specified are met, the second expects us to query the suite for the data from a unified interface.

There are 7 kinds of context that we can work with in Awareness API such as

Time — Local time at current user’s location

Location — Latitude/Longitude

Place — Places around user

Activity — Detected user activity (biking, walking, running, etc.)

Beacons — Check nearby beacon(s)

Headphones — Are headphones plugged in?

Weather — Current weather conditions

Now the Two set’s of API’s :

• Snapshot API — Allows you to “request an information based on user’s context” as listed above.
• Fence API — Allows you to “receive a signal when user’s context has changed and reaches the condition” through callback function, for example, if user moves closed to the specific coordinate with headphones plugged in, Fench API will call the registered BroadcastReceiver and let you do your job.

Getting started

1. Create a project in https://console.developers.google.com (or in case you already have one, you can use it instead)
2. And then browse to API Manager page and search for Awareness and click at Awareness API and Click Enable and wait until it finishes enabling

3. Go to Credentials tab and click at Create credentials -> API key -> Android key. Enter the name you project, for example, Android key and click Create (or if you have already created Android key previously, you could skip this step and use the existed one)

4. Add dependency in build.gradle

compile 'com.google.android.gms:play-services-contextmanager:9.2.0'

5. Open AndroidManifest.xml file and add meta-data to <application> tag like this:

        <meta-data
            android:name="com.google.android.awareness.API_KEY"
            android:value="YOUR_KEY" />
        <meta-data
            android:name="com.google.android.geo.API_KEY"
            android:value="YOUR_KEY" />
        <meta-data
            android:name="com.google.android.nearby.messages.API_KEY"
            android:value="YOUR_KEY" />

We also need to add permissions for this:

6. Open AndroidManifest.xml

    <uses-permission android:name="android.permission.ACCESS_FINE_LOCATION" />
    <uses-permission android:name="com.google.android.gms.permission.ACTIVITY_RECOGNITION" />

Now we come to the actual java code. open your activity and initialise the GoogleApiClient in onCreate()

private GoogleApiClient mGoogleApiClient;

    @Override
    protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        setContentView(R.layout.activity_layout);

        mGoogleApiClient = new GoogleApiClient.Builder(this)
                .addApi(Awareness.API)
                .build();
        mGoogleApiClient.connect();
    }

So this ends the setup part. Now we move on to the actual data retrieval from the API.

Accessing Snapshot API

Awareness.SnapshotApi.getDetectedActivity(mGoogleApiClient)
                .setResultCallback(new ResultCallback<DetectedActivityResult>() {
                    @Override
                    public void onResult(@NonNull DetectedActivityResult detectedActivityResult) {
                        if (!detectedActivityResult.getStatus().isSuccess()) {
                            Log.e(TAG, "Could not get the current activity.");
                            return;
                        }
                        ActivityRecognitionResult ar = detectedActivityResult.getActivityRecognitionResult();
                        DetectedActivity probableActivity = ar.getMostProbableActivity();
                        Log.i(TAG, probableActivity.toString());
                    }
                });

This will return the most probable activity done by the user. We can get a particular activity like walking, running, driving as well by integers defined below

    public static final int IN_VEHICLE = 0;
    public static final int ON_BICYCLE = 1;
    public static final int ON_FOOT = 2;
    public static final int STILL = 3;
    public static final int UNKNOWN = 4;
    public static final int TILTING = 5;
    public static final int WALKING = 7;
    public static final int RUNNING = 8;

Similarly we can also get Headphone state, location, weather, beacon etc.

For example let’s see headphone state:

Awareness.SnapshotApi.getHeadphoneState(mGoogleApiClient)
                .setResultCallback(new ResultCallback<HeadphoneStateResult>() {
                    @Override
                    public void onResult(@NonNull HeadphoneStateResult headphoneStateResult) {
                        if (!headphoneStateResult.getStatus().isSuccess()) {
                            Log.e(TAG, "Could not get headphone state.");
                            return;
                        }
                        HeadphoneState headphoneState = headphoneStateResult.getHeadphoneState();
                        if (headphoneState.getState() == HeadphoneState.PLUGGED_IN) {
                            Log.i(TAG, "Headphones are plugged in.\n");
                        } else {
                            Log.i(TAG, "Headphones are NOT plugged in.\n");
                        }
                    }
                });

This is same as acquiring activity and headphoneState.getState() will give you if it is plugged in or not

Now we take a look at the Fence API

Fence is similar to the geofence but in addition to geofence, the fence API also allows us to set awareness conditions and check if both conditions are true.

We use a BroadcastReceiver

private static final String FENCE_RECEIVER_ACTION = "FENCE_RECEIVE";

    private HeadphoneFenceBroadcastReceiver fenceReceiver;
    private PendingIntent mFencePendingIntent;


    @Override
    protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        ...

        fenceReceiver = new HeadphoneFenceBroadcastReceiver();
        Intent intent = new Intent(FENCE_RECEIVER_ACTION);
        mFencePendingIntent = PendingIntent.getBroadcast(MainActivity.this,
                10001,
                intent,
                0);
    }

    private void registerFences() {
        // Create a fence.
    }

    private void unregisterFence() {
    }

    @Override
    protected void onStart() {
        super.onStart();
        registerFences();
        registerReceiver(fenceReceiver, new IntentFilter(FENCE_RECEIVER_ACTION));
    }

    @Override
    protected void onStop() {
        super.onStop();
        unregisterFences();
        unregisterReceiver(fenceReceiver);
    }

    class HeadphoneFenceBroadcastReceiver extends BroadcastReceiver {

        @Override
        public void onReceive(Context context, Intent intent) {

        }

    }

Here when we get message in onReceive() and we can detect if headphone is connected or not. Something like this

FenceState fenceState = FenceState.extract(intent);

            Log.d(TAG, "Fence Receiver Received");

            if (TextUtils.equals(fenceState.getFenceKey(), "headphoneFenceKey")) {
                switch (fenceState.getCurrentState()) {
                    case FenceState.TRUE:
                        Log.i(TAG, "Fence > Headphones are plugged in.");
                        break;
                    case FenceState.FALSE:
                        Log.i(TAG, "Fence > Headphones are NOT plugged in.");
                        break;
                    case FenceState.UNKNOWN:
                        Log.i(TAG, "Fence > The headphone fence is in an unknown state.");
                        break;
                }
            }

So as you can see this is pretty straight forward and very useful. You can build so many apps with multiple fences. You can think of a lot of usecases for this and make a lot of amazing apps. Happy Tinkering with the Awareness API!