Develop Reference

Why LiveData can receive the last available data automatically?

I am reading LiveData source code, and for this method:
public void observe(#NonNull LifecycleOwner owner, #NonNull Observer<?super T> observer) { .. }
And this is part of its doc:
When data changes while the owner is not active, it will not receive
any updates. If it becomes active again, it will receive the last
available data automatically.
I was trying to figure out why LiveData can achieve this lifecycle-awareness. I read source code of setValue but still couldn't get it. Can anybody help me with the on the general idea?

Suppose you are not using live data and you are showing list of data with pagination concept . You as user have scroll down to view more and more data and application is calling apis to get data as you scroll . Now you have rotated your device so as developer we know that your activity will be recreated and user will be at initial stage again as all things were destroyed .. Well you can achieve this using onSaveInstance but you will have to code and manage yourself ..
So user will have to scroll again to view all data but imagine if you have some mechanism where you get your last updated data whenever activity lifecycle changes so you can easily set data again and allow user to use your app like nothing happened .. and here livedata concept come into picture with lifecycle awareness
Hope this answer will clear your doubts
Edit :-
To understand how they are managing lifecycle , you can visit this link
https://developer.android.com/topic/libraries/architecture/lifecycle#lc
here is source code method of LiveData class where you can see(at last line) how they are adding lifecycler owne to observer

Read the source code of LiveData.java (in lifecycle-livedata-core:2.2.0#aar) again, it seems clear to me now.
When adding an observer to LiveData via liveData.observe(lifecycleOwner, Observer { .. } ), the magic happens in the observe method.
In the observe method, it puts the lifecycleOwner and the Observer into a new object called LifecycleBoundObserver like this:
LifecycleBoundObserver wrapper = new LifecycleBoundObserver(owner, observer);
// ... some other code
owner.getLifecycle().addObserver(wrapper);
Important to note and we can also tell it from the last statement: the LifecycleBoundObserver is an instance of LifecycleObserver, that means, it can be notified when the given lifecycleOwner gets state updated, the key lies in the onStateChanged method of LifecycleBoundObserver.
#Override
public void onStateChanged(#NonNull LifecycleOwner source,
#NonNull Lifecycle.Event event) {
if (mOwner.getLifecycle().getCurrentState() == DESTROYED) {
removeObserver(mObserver);
return;
}
activeStateChanged(shouldBeActive());
}
So:
If the lifecycleOwner (the Activity or Fragment) gets DESTROYED, it will remove the observer (the callback observer, not the LifecycleObserver), hence the observer won't be notified for new data once it's DESTROYED.
If it is not DESTROYED, it requires the lifecycleOwner in Active states (STARTED or RESUMED), this is restricted by the return value from the method shouldBeAlive(), and finally the new data gets delivered to observer callback in the method activeStateChanged.
void activeStateChanged(boolean newActive) {
if (newActive == mActive) {
return;
}
// immediately set active state, so we'd never dispatch anything to inactive
// owner
mActive = newActive;
boolean wasInactive = LiveData.this.mActiveCount == 0;
LiveData.this.mActiveCount += mActive ? 1 : -1;
if (wasInactive && mActive) {
onActive();
}
if (LiveData.this.mActiveCount == 0 && !mActive) {
onInactive();
}
if (mActive) {
dispatchingValue(this);
}
}
If the input param newActive is true, then finally it will reach the statement of dispatchingValue(this) - the last statement, and if it is false (i.e.: inactive states: PAUSED / STOPPED / DESTROYED), it won't call dispatchingValue(this), thus the observer callback won't be triggered.
If the Activity / Fragment goes back to foreground from background, it becomes Active again, then the LifecycleBoundObserver will be notified and the onStateChanged will be called again, and this time, when calling activeStateChanged(newActive), it passes true, therefore, dispatchingValue(this) will be called, and the latest data set via setValue or post will be picked up, that's the reason for explaining why the Activity can get the last emitted / latest value of LiveData.

How to deliver and persist changes to the UI from an asynchronous task hosted by a retained fragment?

Using a retained fragment to host asynchronous tasks is not a new idea (see Alex Lockwood's excellent blog post on the topic)
But after using this I've come up against issues when delivering content back to my activity from the AsyncTask callbacks. Specifically, I found that trying to dismiss a dialog could result in an IllegalStateException. Again, an explanation for this can be found in another blog post by Alex Lockwood. Specifically, this section explains what is going on:
Avoid performing transactions inside asynchronous callback methods.
This includes commonly used methods such as AsyncTask#onPostExecute()
and LoaderManager.LoaderCallbacks#onLoadFinished(). The problem with
performing transactions in these methods is that they have no
knowledge of the current state of the Activity lifecycle when they are
called. For example, consider the following sequence of events:
An activity executes an AsyncTask.
The user presses the "Home" key,
causing the activity's onSaveInstanceState() and onStop() methods to
be called.
The AsyncTask completes and onPostExecute() is called,
unaware that the Activity has since been stopped.
A FragmentTransaction is committed inside the onPostExecute() method,
causing an exception to be thrown.
However, it seems to me that this is part of a wider problem, it just happens that the fragment manager throws an exception to make you aware of it. In general, any change you make to the UI after onSaveInstanceState() will be lost. So the advice
Avoid performing transactions inside asynchronous callback methods.
Actually should be:
Avoid performing UI updates inside asynchronous callback methods.
Questions:
If using this pattern, should you therefore cancel your task, preventing callbacks in onSaveInstanceState() if not rotating?
Like so:
#Override
public void onSaveInstanceState(Bundle outState)
{
if (!isChangingConfigurations())
{
//if we aren't rotating, we need to lose interest in the ongoing task and cancel it
mRetainedFragment.cancelOnGoingTask();
}
super.onSaveInstanceState(outState);
}
Should you even bother using retained fragments at all for retaining ongoing tasks? Will it be more effective to always mark something in your model about an ongoing request? Or do something like RoboSpice where you can re-connect to an ongoing task if it is pending. To get a similar behaviour to the retained fragment, you'd have to cancel a task if you were stopping for reasons other than a config change.
Continuing from the first question: Even during a config change, you should not be making any UI updates after onSaveInstanceState() so should you actually do something like this:
Rough code:
#Override
public void onSaveInstanceState(Bundle outState)
{
if (!isChangingConfigurations())
{
//if we aren't rotating, we need to lose interest in the ongoing task and cancel it
mRetainedFragment.cancelOnGoingTask();
}
else
{
mRetainedFragment.beginCachingAsyncResponses();
}
super.onSaveInstanceState(outState);
}
#Override
public void onRestoreInstanceState(Bundle inState)
{
super.onRestoreInstanceState(inState);
if (inState != null)
{
mRetainedFragment.stopCachingAndDeliverAsyncResponses();
}
}
The beginCachingAsyncResponses() would do something like the PauseHandler seen here

From a developer's point of view, avoiding NPEs' in a live app is the first order of business. To methods like onPostExecute() of AsyncTask and onResume() & onError() in a Volley Request, add:
Activity = getActivity();
if(activity != null && if(isAdded())){
// proceed ...
}
Inside an Activity it should be
if(this != null){
// proceed ...
}
This is inelegant. And inefficient, because the work on other thread continues unabated. But this will let the app dodge NPEs'. Besides this, there is the calling of various cancel() methods in onPause(), onStop() and onDestroy().
Now coming to the more general problem of configuration changes and app exits. I've read that AsyncTasks and Volley Requests should only be performed from Services and not Activitys, because Services continue to run even if the user "exits" the app.

So I ended up digging around a bit on this myself and came up with quite a nice answer.
Although not documented to do so, activity state changes are performed in synchronous blocks. That is, once a config change starts, the UI thread will be busy all the way from onPause to onResume. Therefore it's unnecessary to have anything like beginCachingAsyncResponses as I had in my question as it would be impossible to jump onto the main thread after a config change started.
You can see this is true by scanning the source: http://grepcode.com/file/repository.grepcode.com/java/ext/com.google.android/android/5.0.2_r1/android/app/ActivityThread.java#3886 looking at this, it looks like onSaveInstancestate is done sequentially with handleDestroyActivity ... And so it would be impossible to update the UI an have it lost during a config change.
So this should be sufficient:
#Override
public void onSaveInstanceState(Bundle outState)
{
if (!isChangingConfigurations())
{
//if we aren't rotating, we need to lose interest in the ongoing task and cancel it
mRetainedFragment.cancelOnGoingTask();
}
super.onSaveInstanceState(outState);
}
From the retained fragment it's crucial to access the activity from the main thread:
public void onSomeAsyncNetworkIOResult(Result r)
{
Handler mainHandler = new Handler(Looper.getMainLooper());
Runnable myRunnable = new Runnable()
{
//If we were to call getActivity here, it might be destroyed by the time we hit the main thread
#Override
public void run()
{
//Now we are running on the UI thread, we cannot be part-way through a config change
// It's crucial to call getActivity from the main thread as it might change otherwise
((MyActivity)getActivity()).handleResultInTheUI(r);
}
};
mainHandler.post(myRunnable);
return;
}

What does AsyncTaskLoader.deliverResult() actually do?

I am trying to understand some finer points of AsyncTaskLoaders. This may be obvious, to others but I can't find an unambiguous example or definition that demonstrates and exmplains what happens when you override the deliverResult() method. What actually gets delivered ? How does this interact with the calling object ? I can see use of super.deliverResult, which passes a private object from the class. So, does the loader automatically know what to associate with the "delivered result". I am totally confused.

Seems I'm a bit late to the party, but anyway...
One of the main advantages of this intermediary step between the background loading and the UI thread's callback onLoadFinished() getting called
loadInBackground()
deliverResult() and
the callback onLoadFinished()
is that it gives us a means of shortcutting the whole loading process from within the AsyncTaskLoader class.
And this can be put to good use for caching the loading result within your AsyncTaskLoader and preventing the background loading from happening if there is cached data.
And why would we want to do this? Isn't the whole point of loaders dealing with those dreaded activity lifecycle issues (e.g. rotating the device), maintaining state (like, caching data) and having a means to get updated when underlying data changes (CursorLoader)?
Well, yes, but this isn't the whole story.
Consider this use case:
You've got your app (the one with the AsynTaskLoader) up-and-running and it already has loaded data into your UI.
Then, you switch over to your Twitter app to check on some news and return to you app.
Without caching, upon returning to your app, the loader would do its reloading.
This behavior is different from the one after configuration changes, e.g. rotating your device, in which case no reloading would take place.
So, how would we then prevent the loader from re-fetching data in case we're just sending our app to the background and, later, return to it again?
Solution
Create a cache member variable in your AsyncTaskLoader implementation.
Override deliverResult() so that you save your fetched data in your cache first, before you call the superclass's implementation of deliverResult().
In onStartLoading() check if there's cached data, and if so, let your AsyncTaskLoader just deliver that. Otherwise, start loading.
Here's a link to a sample app which implements this behaviour.
It's just a "Toy app" and as such part of Udacity's current version of the "Developing Android Apps" fundamentals course. And here is the link to the respective video within that course that deals with this issue. (The course is free, but you'll still have to sign-up w/ Udacity).
In short, what this app demonstrates, is a UI in which the user can input a search query for searching GitHub's repos (via the GitHub API), showing the resulting search URL in a TextView and also the raw JSON fetched from GitHub in another TextView.
The whole action happens in just MainActivity.java and the relevant part here is within the AsyncTaskLoader that's implemented as an anonymous inner class:
For step 1, just introduce a member variable in your AsyncTaskLoader implementation that's meant to serve as your data cache.
/* This String will contain the raw JSON
from the results of our Github search */
String mGithubJson;
For step 2, override deliverResult() as to cache the loading result.
When loadInBackground() has finished, it passes its return value to deliverResult().
It does so anyway, but now that we've overridden deliverResult() we can step right in and store our fetched data into the cache member variable which we've created with just so good foresight.
And finally, we chain up to the super class implementation of deliverResult() with super.deliverResult() which will pass-on the result to the callback method onLoadFinished(), running on the UI thread.
#Override
public void deliverResult(String githubJson) {
mGithubJson = githubJson;
super.deliverResult(githubJson);
}
For step 3, check in onStartLoading() whether or not we've got cached data.
If we don't have cached data (yet), just force the loading to begin with a call to forceLoad().
But if we do have cached data, just call deliverResult(yourCachedDataGoesHere) and pass-in the cached data as argument.
if (mGithubJson != null) {
deliverResult(mGithubJson);
} else {
forceLoad();
}
So, if you now switch back and forth between your app and some other app(s), you'll notice that no reloading takes place, as the loader will just use your cached data.

suppose when data are loading in the background, at this time, user press HOME button and exist the app, when user comes back to the app, loading has been finished. So we have already have the data, then AsyncTaskLoader will call the deliverResult() method, deliver the data to the onLoadFinished() method for displaying.
When the user come back to app, onStartLoading() is being called before loadInBackground(). In this method, we could check if our data if empty or not, if not empty, we call deliverResult() and send the result to onLoaderFinished(), so it could prevent to reload data.
When we press HOME exist the app and then come back, it will not create a new Loader, instead the old loader will try to load data.

The only answer I can find that makes any sense is based on a decription in this link.
"A registered listener to receive the Loader's results when it
completes a load. For each of its Loaders, the LoaderManager
registers an OnLoadCompleteListener which will forward the Loader’s
delivered results to the client with a call to
onLoadFinished(Loader loader, D result). Loaders should deliver
results to these registered listeners with a call to
Loader#deliverResult(D result)."
deliverResult appears to be used when you have listeners to the AsyncTask and want to send the results back to them. I would say it's uncommon. The Android documentation is even less descriptive:
"Sends the result of the load to the registered listener. Should only
be called by subclasses. Must be called from the process's main
thread.
Parameters
data : the result of the load"

deliverResult works after doInbackground completes. It sends the result D (returned by doInBackground) to the calling thread. You may wish to override it for cleaning data, but you can do clean-up in doInBackground instead without overriding deliverResult.

Can you use a LoaderManager from a Service?

I have a data loading system set up using a custom Loader and Cursor that is working great from Activities and Fragments but there is no LoaderManager (that I can find) in Service. Does anyone know why LoaderManager was excluded from Service? If not is there a way around this?

Does anyone know why LoaderManager was excluded from Service?
As stated in the other answer, LoaderManager was explicitly designed to manage Loaders through the lifecycles of Acivities and Fragments. Since Services do not have these configuration changes to deal with, using a LoaderManager isn't necessary.
If not is there a way around this?
Yes, the trick is you don't need to use a LoaderManager, you can just work with your Loader directly, which will handle asynchronously loading your data and monitoring any underlying data changes for you, which is much better than querying your data manually.
First, create, register, and start loading your Loader when your Service is created.
#Override
public void onCreate() {
mCursorLoader = new CursorLoader(context, contentUri, projection, selection, selectionArgs, orderBy);
mCursorLoader.registerListener(LOADER_ID_NETWORK, this);
mCursorLoader.startLoading();
}
Next, implement OnLoadCompleteListener<Cursor> in your Service to handle load callbacks.
#Override
public void onLoadComplete(Loader<Cursor> loader, Cursor data) {
// Bind data to UI, etc
}
Lastly, don't forget clean up your Loader when the Service is destroyed.
#Override
public void onDestroy() {
// Stop the cursor loader
if (mCursorLoader != null) {
mCursorLoader.unregisterListener(this);
mCursorLoader.cancelLoad();
mCursorLoader.stopLoading();
}
}

Unfortunately, no. Loaders were designed for activities and fragments in order to cleanly handle configuration changes that occur in Activites and Fragments. i.e. Rotating your device and re-attaching to the existing data.
A service does not have any configuration changes, it will sit in the background until it completes or the system is forced to kill it. So assuming you're executing your code on a background thread in your Service (which you should be anyways), theres just no reason to use a Loader. Simply make the calls you need to query your data.
So if your Service is just an IntentService, you can write your logic to query your cursor-backed data in the onHandleIntent() method.
http://developer.android.com/guide/components/loaders.html

LoaderCallbacks.onLoadFinished not called if orientation change happens during AsyncTaskLoader run

Using android-support-v4.jar and FragmentActivity (no fragments at this point)
I have an AsyncTaskLoader which I start loading and then change the orientation while the background thread is still running. In my logs I see the responses come through to the background requests. The responses complete and I expect onLoadFinished() to be called, but it never is.
As a means of troubleshooting, in the Manifest, if I set android:configChanges="orientation" onLoadFinished() gets called as expected.
My Activity implements the loader callbacks. In the source for LoaderManager.initLoader() I see that if the loader already exists, the new callback is set to the LoaderInfo inner object class but I don't see where Loader.registerListener() is called again. registerListener only seems to be called when LoaderManagerImpl.createAndInstallLoader() is called.
I suspect that since the activity is destroyed and recreated on orientation change and since it is the listener for callbacks, the new activity is not registered to be notified.
Can anyone confirm my understanding and what the solution so that onLoadFinished is called after orientation change?

Nikolay identified the issue - Thank you.
I was calling initLoader fron onResume(). The Android documentation states:
"You typically initialize a Loader within the activity's onCreate()
method, or within the fragment's onActivityCreated() method."
Read "typically" as a bit more emphatic than I did when it comes to dealing with configuration change life cycle.
I moved my initLoader call to onCreate() and that solved my problem.
I think the reason is that in FragmentActivity.onCreate() a collection of LoaderManagers is pulled from LastNonConfigurationInstance and in FragmentActivity.onStart() there is some start up work regarding Loaders and LoaderManagers. Things are already in process by the time onResume() is called. When the Loader needs instantiated for the first time, calling initLoader from outside onCreate() still works.

It's actually not the call to initLoader() in onCreate() that's fixing it. It's the call to getLoaderManager(). In summary, what happens is that when an activity is restarted, it already knows about the loaders. It tries to restart them when your activity hits onStart(), but then it hits this code in FragmentHostCallback.doLoaderStart()*:
void doLoaderStart() {
if (mLoadersStarted) {
return;
}
mLoadersStarted = true;
if (mLoaderManager != null) {
mLoaderManager.doStart();
} else if (!mCheckedForLoaderManager) {
mLoaderManager = getLoaderManager("(root)", mLoadersStarted, false);
// WTF: Why aren't we calling doStart() here?!
}
mCheckedForLoaderManager = true;
}
Since getLoaderManager() wasn't called yet, mLoaderManager is null. It therefore skips the first condition and the call to mLoaderManager.doStart().
You can test this by simply putting a call to getLoaderManager() in onCreate(). You don't need to call init / restart loaders there.
This really seems like a bug to me.
* This is the code path even if you aren't using fragments, so don't get confused by that.