2.8. Intents and IntentFilters

One area where Android shines is the flexibility it provides in communicating between components, and sharing data between them. Android makes this possible using Intent- and IntentFilter-based events. As we’ve noted, an Intent is a description of an action you want to happen, and an IntentFilter is a means for a component to declare it’s capable of handling a specific Intent. Intents themselves don’t do any work; rather, they describe something that needs to be done.

If a component wants to perform an action, it declares that intention with an Intent and hands it off to the system. The system then decodes the Intent and decides which other component, Activity, Service, or BroadcastReceiver, can handle the job.