Android startup Service onStart and another issue

I've been trying to figure this out for a while now and can't figure out why this is happening. This seems like it would be simple, but I can't get this to work out.

Here's what I'd like to happen

When I start the application,

1. If the background Service (long running singleton service) isn't running, start it before starting the activity.

2. Start the "homepage" activity

Updated 8/20

Here's what is happening:

1. I start the application and the servic开发者_Go百科e isn't running

2. I kick off the intent (via context.startService)

   - the context.startService is called

3. The activity runs to completion

4. The onStartCommand is run

How can I get the onStartCommand to run before the activity starts running??

Any advice on this would relieve a lot of frustration. I've searched the forums prior to asking this but couldn't find anything that matches my issues

Thanks a lot!

Update

Thanks for the quick responses.

I should have mentioned that I'm already running this from an extension of Application (starting the service in the onCreate method).

In my current implementation (below), here's what happens in order as I step through the app. I thought this would cause the service to run before the activity but the activity runs and then the service runs. This is the main point of my confusion.

1. the application onCreate is called

2. the startService method is run

3. the starting activity runs

4. the service onCreate is called

- the service onStart is never called (I'll try the onStartCommand instead as I'm not targeting older platforms - thanks for that suggestion Alexander)

    public class MyApp extends Application {

@Override
public final void onCreate()
{

        if(!MyService.isRunning()) // this is a static method with thread lock
        {
            Intent i = new Intent(context, MyService.class);
            i.setAction(MyConstants.INTENT_START_SERVICE);
            context.startService(i);
        }
    }
}

---

You can create a new class that extends the Application class. This class will run before the main activity is called, and only when the app is first launched. This is where you can launch a service before your homepage activity is opened.

---

Thanks to Alexander O for his comment that pointed me in the right direction to getting the onStart command to run. I still can't get the onStartCommand to run before the activity though. Any suggestions?

My issue was that I had both an onStartCommand and an onStart function in my service.
Apparently I didn't understand the function of onStartCommand and thought that it was just supposed to define the service type (STICKY, NOT_STICKY).
Once I removed onStart and moved the onStart code into onStartCommand the application began working.
For those wondering, here's basically what I had.

public class MyService extends Service
{
 ...
    @Override
    public int onStartCommand(Intent intent, int flags, int startId)
    {
            // this was being executed but didn't really do anything
            return Service.START_STICKY;
    }
    ...
    @Override
    public void onStart(Intent intent, int startId)
    {
        // logic that was never executed
        // problem fixed when I removed onStart and moved the code to onStartCommand
    }
}