Avoid Activity resuming when app goes in background - android

In my application I have three activities:
<activity
android:name="com.example.myapp.SplashScreenActivity"
android:exported="true"
android:launchMode="singleInstance"
android:noHistory="true"
android:screenOrientation="sensorLandscape" >
<intent-filter>
<action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN" />
<category android:name="android.intent.category.LAUNCHER" />
</intent-filter>
</activity>
<activity
android:name="com.example.myapp.MainActivity"
android:exported="false"
android:launchMode="singleInstance"
android:screenOrientation="sensorLandscape" >
</activity>
<activity
android:name="com.example.myapp.ListActivity"
android:exported="false"
android:launchMode="singleTop"
android:screenOrientation="sensorLandscape" >
<meta-data
android:name="android.support.PARENT_ACTIVITY"
android:value="com.example.myapp.MainActivity" />
</activity>
The first one is the LAUNCHER, SplashScreenActivity, which is a splash screen that disappears quite soon and it's not shown in recent activities, it starts MainActivity. In MainActivity users can select a category and ListActivity shows the items belonging to the given category. This is done with the following code:
Intent i = new Intent(getActivity(),ListActivity.class);
i.setFlags(Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK|Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_REORDER_TO_FRONT);
i.putExtra("category",mCategory);
startActivity(i);
In ListActivity the onResume method checks for the "category" extra and shows data accordingly. Since Activity launchMode is singleTop, I've also overridden the onNewIntent method to set the new Intent of the Activity.
This works properly if the app doesn't go in background: in this case, when I restart MainActivity and select a category, ListActivity resumes the old Activity showing data belonging to the previously chosen category.
How should I fix flags/launchMode in such way that my app doesn't resume ListActivity with the old data loaded?

You should not use the special launch modes. These are rarely required and only in very specific circumstances. Remove all the launchMode specifiers from your manifest. You also don't need to use these flags when launching ListActivity from MainActivity:
i.setFlags(Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK|Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_REORDER_TO_FRONT);
Your use of singleInstance launch mode is causing you all these problems.

Assuming you would ditch all the launchModes and Flags, then activity lifecycle gives you all the information needed to implement application as you have described - maybe there is somethings you have not added?
Once application goes to background, then ListActivity will be allowed to save its state, even if system will kill your process (lack of memory etc.), then still - launching back your app will first bring back ListActivity with previously saved instance state. So you will not have behaviour as you describe : when I restart MainActivity and select a category, ListActivity resumes the old Activity showing data belonging to the previously chosen category.
Still, if you need to keep to your current design, then you should somehow inform ListActivity of new data changes, question is if ListActivity.onNewIntent is being called at all in the case your describe? Have you tried adding Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_SINGLE_TOP : as per this blog entry: http://www.acnenomor.com/1094151p2/bug-onnewintent-not-called-for-singletop-activity-with-intentflagactivitynewtask ?

Related

Android handling click on notification

I have this situation in my app: I have these activities
<activity
android:name=".presentation.view.start.view.activity.StartActivity"
android:screenOrientation="sensorPortrait"
android:theme="#style/SplashTheme">
<intent-filter>
<action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN" />
<category android:name="android.intent.category.LAUNCHER" />
</intent-filter>
</activity>
<activity
android:name=".presentation.view.main.view.activity.MainActivity"
android:configChanges="locale"
android:screenOrientation="sensorPortrait"
android:theme="#style/AppThemeMultiStep"
android:windowSoftInputMode="stateAlwaysHidden" />
<activity
android:name=".presentation.view.firstScreen.view.activity.FirstScreenActivity"
android:screenOrientation="sensorPortrait"
android:theme="#style/AppThemeMultiStep"
android:windowSoftInputMode="stateAlwaysHidden" />
<activity
android:name=".presentation.view.signup.view.activity.LoginViaPinActivity"
android:screenOrientation="sensorPortrait"
android:theme="#style/AppThemeMultiStep" />
StartActivity acts as a sort of "router" based on the application state:
If I am not logged in, it will launch FirstScreenActivity
If I am logged in, it will launch LoginViaPinActivity, which will login the user based on some logic and then launch MainActivity. At the end of all, MainActivity will be at the root of the activities stack.
At some point the app will receive a notification, and when I tap it I want this:
if the app is running and MainActivity is running, open MainActivity (this is easy, there are planty of ways I can to that with various flags) but if it's not running launch StartActivity (so that I can open the app based on all the startup logics implemented there).
So the options I can think of are:
know if an activity is running in order to fire an intent or another (I don't like static fields solutions like you read in many SO post related to this)
make StartActivity the root of the task and find a combination of intent flags which will act like "launch StartActivity, but if it is running at the root of a task, bring that task to front" (this would be my preferred option if possible)
any suggestion is very appreciated
How do you usually handle this kind of situations? (I don't think I'm the first in the world with this problem :) )
Here is my approach -
Make StartActivity as your router as you've said. Just make launchmode to singleTop in your manifest in order to user onNewIntent() method of an Activity.
You'll generate notification, sending some data with contentIntent - as a result clicking on notification you'll be redirected to StartActivity.
Two cases here -
If StartActivity is in stack
onNewIntent gets called with your new Intent - Choose your activity required to be open - If it is already in stack Bring it to front using FLAG_ACTIVITY_REORDER_TO_FRONT flag
If StartActivity is not running or not in stack
Receive bundle of intent that is being got from the intent via notification, parse data and open an activity accordingly.

Two activities in task manager of same app

My application have two activities, say MainActivity and SecondActivity. Main activity is declared as android:launchMode="singleInstance" and its orientation is always portrait. Second activity is always has landscape orientation.
In some devices, everything is alright and in task manager there is only one instance of my app, but in some devices (like Samsung S7), when I launch SecondActivity, there will be two instances of my app in task manager like this image:
My guess is that something is wrong with the launchMode of the MainActivty but I need it to be singleInstance. Any suggestion?
EDIT:
MainActivity in manifest:
<activity
android:name=".Activities.MainActivity"
android:screenOrientation="portrait"
android:launchMode="singleInstance"
android:theme="#style/AppTheme"
android:windowSoftInputMode="adjustPan">
<intent-filter>
<action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN" />
<category android:name="android.intent.category.LAUNCHER" />
</intent-filter>
</activity>
and second:
<activity
android:name=".Activities.SecondActivity"
android:screenOrientation="landscape" />
launching code:
Intent intent = new Intent(getActivity(),
intent.putExtra("VideoUri", filmGet.getOutput().getData().getFilmTrailer());
startActivity(intent);
If it helps, I launch SecondActivity from a fragment.
So, after reading #sharan comment and some googling, it made me to read some google documents. According to docs, there isn't any difference between android:launchMode=singleInstance and android:launchMode=singleTask but one. They both make your activity singleton and so you will never have two instances of it. The only difference between them is that singleInstance will prevent the task from attaching any other activity while singleTask has not this limitation. Any other things about them are the same.
So, for anyone who is reading this post, I'll recommend you to never use singleInstance launch mode unless you exactly need what it has. Because if you have only one activity in your app, then there will be no differences between singleInstance and singleTask. And if you have more than one activity, then I'll recommend you to all of your activities belong to one task.
In short, change singleInstance to singleTask and you are go.

Android Launcher Application keeps being destroyed

I'm developing custom launcher app containing a WebView. When I launch app as a normal app, it works without any issues, after calling startActivity()/ startActivityForResult() (Intent.ACTION_CALL, doesn't occur when using Intent for MediaStore.ACTION_IMAGE_CAPTURE) application calls onPause(), onStop() and other activity starts, after completing its task goes back to the application. However when I set application as launcher, it calls onDestroy() right after onPause() and onStop(). Such behaviour is not desired because I'm trying to keep inserted data in the launcher WebView app.
There are also many errors in logcat right after onDestroy() similar or same as E/libGLESv2﹕ HWUI Protection: wrong calling from app context F:ES3-glDeleteBuffers (when not using it as launcher such errors appear, but sporadically and in different situations).
AppManifest contains
<activity
android:name=".MainActivity"
android:label="#string/app_name"
android:launchMode="singleTask" >
<intent-filter>
<action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN" />
<category android:name="android.intent.category.LAUNCHER" />
<category android:name="android.intent.category.HOME" />
<category android:name="android.intent.category.DEFAULT" />
</intent-filter>
</activity>
I also tried using singleInstance, with that mode application works correctly after installation, but breaks its behaviour after restart.
Using minSdkVersion 19, tested on Android 4.4.2.
Ok, so here's how I managed to solve the issue, and actually what was the problem. I used
Settings.System.putInt(
getContentResolver(),
Settings.System.USER_ROTATION,
// toRotate //Or a different ROTATION_ constant
Surface.ROTATION_270
);
for screen rotation, because I needed to be sure the app was running in landscape mode. The thing is, camera supports landscape mode, but dialer doesn't. So when I launched camera it was without issues, but dialer caused portrait rotation and that caused WebView's default behaviour when rotating the screen, onDestroy() and that causes reload afterwards...
Let begin by changing it to something like this,
<activity
android:name=".MainActivity"
android:label="#string/app_name"
android:launchMode="singleTop" >
<intent-filter>
<action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN" />
<category android:name="android.intent.category.LAUNCHER" />
</intent-filter>
</activity>
Now lets understand what launchMode(s) are
via the documentation:
android:launchMode
An instruction on how the activity should be launched. There are four modes that work in conjunction with activity flags
(FLAG_ACTIVITY_ constants) in Intent objects to determine what should
happen when the activity is called upon to handle an intent. They are:
"standard" "singleTop" "singleTask" "singleInstance" The default
mode is "standard".*
"singleTask" Does not allow Multiple Instances The system creates the activity at the root of a new task and routes the intent
to it. However, if an instance of the activity already exists, the
system routes the intent to existing instance through a call to its
onNewIntent() method, rather than creating a new one.
"standard" Default. The system always creates a new instance of
the activity in the target task and routes the intent to it.
"singleTop" If an instance of the activity already exists at
the top of the target task, the system routes the intent to that
instance through a call to its onNewIntent() method, rather than
creating a new instance of the activity.
singleInstance" Same as "singleTask", except that the system doesn't launch any other activities into the task holding the
instance. The activity is always the single and only member of its
task.
For more in depth refer to the Documentation

android "close" activity

i have an application that has "login" and "logoff" actions. after the user logs in, there could ne an arbitrary number of activities left on the stack at the point when they log off.
when the user logs off, i want all application state to be reset. i clear my disk caches and preferences, but there's still state left in running (paused) activities. in fact, when the user logs in again, i find that the old activities from the previous login session are still there with their old state (i understand why this is of course). how can i cause the entire app to reset / close / restart?
i've seen a few posts about using startActivityForResult(), onActivityResult() to bubble up a "logoff" result code causing each activity to close itself in turn. this looks painful and i'm hoping there's a better way.
EDIT: i've tried starting the "log in" activity with various flags to no avail,
loginIntent.addFlags(Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK|Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_CLEAR_TASK|Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_CLEAR_TOP|Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_SINGLE_TOP);
on your manifest you can put the following attribute to your activity:
android:clearTaskOnLaunch="true"
so you would end up with something like:
<activity android:name=".ui.Activity" android:clearTaskOnLaunch="true" android:theme="#style/MyTheme">
<intent-filter>
<action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN" />
<category android:name="android.intent.category.LAUNCHER" />
</intent-filter>
</activity>

Help with first Android Activity

When my app first opens my first activity that is presented to the user can vary based on configuration options. I only know how to hard code the first activity that runs when the app is running by adding something like this in the Manifest
<activity android:label="#string/app_name" android:name=".MyFirstActivity">
<intent-filter>
<action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN" />
<category android:name="android.intent.category.LAUNCHER" />
</intent-filter>
</activity>
Where MyFirstActivity is the class name of the first activity class to be run. How can I dynamically select which activity to run first when the app is first launched rather than hard code it in the manifest?
Thanks!
Option #1: In onCreate() of MyFirstActivity, call startActivity() for the right activity, then finish().
Option #2: Define several activities with the LAUNCHER <intent-filter>, all but one disabled. On first run (or as needed), enable the right activity and disable the others. Downside: may require a phone reboot to update the launcher, since not all home screen launchers will detect your change.
Option #3: Redesign your GUI such that this is not an issue.

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