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Android navigate up the right graph when using NavController

I'm currently using Android Navigation Architecture in my project. It has a feature that can launch any fragment with a shortcut.
Suppose my navigation graph looks like this: A->B->C->D.
When I'm at fragment A , I directly navigate to fragment D with NavController.navigate(R.id.fragment_d). But when I'm press back button, it returns to fragment A. Is there any way to let the destination navigate back to its parent in navigation graph? (I mean, in this case, D back to C, B then back to A).
Thanks in advance.

Generally, you should always avoid creating a synthetic back stack when within your own app (and only do this when launching your app from a deep link outside your app, i.e., via an app shortcut).
However, you can approach this in one of two ways:
If you're okay with resetting the state on A, you can use NavDeepLinkBuilder to construct a set of Intents suitable for restarting your task on the chosen destination:
navController.createDeepLink()
.setDestination(R.id.destination_d)
.createTaskStackBuilder()
.startActivites()
Just call navigate() multiple times.
navController.navigate(R.id.destination_b)
navController.navigate(R.id.destination_c)
navController.navigate(R.id.destination_d)

I think you should be able to use navControler.navigateUp() on the destination if you have correctly introduced the parent fragment for your fragments. Also, consider the difference between the device back button and up back-arrow to go up to the parent

Android navigation clear whole backstack

I currently have an Android application when in the process of browsing a hierarchy of objects creates a back stack like this.
BrowseActivity(Starting Instance) -> BrowseActivity(Instance B) -> BrowseActivity(Instance C) -> ViewObjectActivity
There is a menu button in the view object activity that I would like to have take the user back to BrowseActivity(Starting Instance) and destroy the rest of the browse activities.
Using Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_CLEAR_TOP only destroys the ViewObjectActivity and leaves the rest in the back stack.
Setting the BrowseActivity to "singleTop" in the manifest breaks the ability to create another instance for further navigation.
Any way to accomplish this that I am probably overlooking?

If you want the menu option to take the user back to the first activity, do just that - take the user back to the first activity.
Have your third activity exit with a specific result that tells the second activity to exit as well. You can extend this to how many activities you want - as long as all the activities except the first one exit, you're good.

You need to use this flag in a pair. The following has always worked for me
Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_CLEAR_TOP
Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK

Could someone please explain FLAG_ACTIVITY_PREVIOUS_IS_TOP

I have an Android app with multiple activities. The main activity communicates over a network and can launch or dismiss various other activities depending on commands it receives over the network. When an Activity is dismissed I don't want to finish() it, just move it down the stack so it's no longer the top activity. What I really need is a FLAG_ACTIVITY_REORDER_TO_BOTTOM but there is no such thing.
There's an intent flag called FLAG_ACTIVITY_PREVIOUS_IS_TOP and the name implies something like that but I don't understand the description:
"If set and this intent is being used to launch a new activity from an
existing one, the current activity will not be counted as the top
activity for deciding whether the new intent should be delivered to
the top instead of starting a new one. The previous activity will be
used as the top, with the assumption being that the current activity
will finish itself immediately"
Could someone please decode that for me, and if it's not what I want IS there some way to tell an activity to submerge itself below the previous one?

This isn't possible. The activities are stacked and you cant put one back under the other. It sounds like you may want to create a class that extends Android’s android.app.Application.
I found this tutorial online and it looks good. Good luck.
Extending Android's android.app.Application tutorial

You cannot move an activity below a certain activity into the android back Stack. The only way to move a activity in back stack is to open another activity on top of it. You can move an activity on top by creating a single instance of activity using FLAG 'singleTop' in this way your activity will be moved to the top of another activity and only a single instance of activity will be there in stack.
More information about activity back stack and Flags is available here.
Go through this information and all your doubts will get cleared about back stack.

Android up navigation for an Activity with multiple parents

I have a problem for implementing up navigation on an app with this navigation tree:
The standard implementation of the back button is fine.
The problem start when trying to implement the Up button.
What I expect:
when the user is on Detail 5 Activity and press the up button the app goes to List 3 Activity
when the user is on Detail 7 Activity and press the up button the app goes back to Home Activity
So in different terms, I'd like to have this behaviour on the back stack:
The Android documentation (Implementing Ancestral Navigation) advice to use the following code to handle up navigation:
Intent parentActivityIntent = new Intent(this, MyParentActivity.class);
parentActivityIntent.addFlags(Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_CLEAR_TOP | Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK);
startActivity(parentActivityIntent);
finish();
But because the parent activity of the Detail Activity differs on the different navigation path I don't know which one it really is. So I can't call it in the Intent.
Is there a way to know the real parent activity in the Android back stack?
If not, is there a way to implement a correct up navigation in this app?

I will stick with my comment on Paul's answer:
The idea is to have a Stack of the last Parent Activities traversed. Example:
public static Stack<Class<?>> parents = new Stack<Class<?>>();
Now in all your parent activities (the activities that are considered parents -e.g. in your case: List and Home), you add this to their onCreate:
protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
parents.push(getClass());
//or better yet parents.push(getIntent()); as #jpardogo pointed
//of course change the other codes to make use of the Intent saved.
//... rest of your code
}
When you want to return to the Parent activity, you can use the following (according to your code):
Intent parentActivityIntent = new Intent(this, parents.pop());
parentActivityIntent.addFlags(Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_CLEAR_TOP | Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK);
startActivity(parentActivityIntent);
finish();
I hope am right (:

That's a tricky question and in my opinion really shows the difficulties in coping with the UX decisions of Android for the "up button". Therefore, there's not a clear-cut answer to your problem.
I have two possible solutions for you.
1. Mimicking the back button behavior.
You could consider adding an extra to the intent for launching Detail from one of its various parents. This extra would inform those activities which activity they would need to launch when android.R.id.home is pressed.
This would effectively mean that your app "goes back" to its common ancestor, instead of simply relaunching Home.
Another way of implementing this may be simply executing onBackPressed() instead of launching Home with Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_CLEAR_TOP, but bear in mind that the associated animation would be different than a normal "up" action.
2. Skip intermediate activites and go home.
Some apps treat the "up button" as a "home button". You might want to consider having it simply always relaunch Home with Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_CLEAR_TOP.

this is an old post for sure, but as I was studying the SharedPreferences, I think it could be a possibility to stack this information within a sharedPreferences data, and to modify its value each time before going down the 2 parents.
Then by reading it, you should be able to directly know your parent, and this without having to build a whole class for that.

What is the way to navigate in Android app

I'm developing a Twitter client for Android and I would like to know which is the better way to build my app.
I want to have a listview that, when clicked, calls another listview to see details and so on but I would also like to be able to go back in my previous list.
What is the best way to do this in Android? At every click, I create a new intent associated with an activity and I do startActivity(intent) so that I can be able to go back with the Back button of Android.
Is it a good way or is there a better approach? I would like to navigate onward and backward of n-levels

The way to navigate back in Android is by launching the Activity intent waiting for a result Doc link and then when you need to go back from the new Activity simply finish it Doc link

Calling finish() in an Activity closes it and returns to the previous one. You can call in on a button click or similar.