When orientation of screen changes, I have read many a times that in order to save data of edit text and text view or any of the radio button I have to use onSaveInstanceState() method.
But when I'm changing the screen orientation my data of edit text, text view and radio button are not getting erased.
So what is the main purpose of using onSaveInstanceState() method. Why do we have to use it if my data are preserved safely ?
Some Views/properties may be handled by default. You could go rooting through the docs to find out exactly which ones and how they are taken care of but...
I would recommend that you take manual control of these save/loads though to ensure that things are handled as you want them to be to avoid edge case bugs and also so you can then persist certain settings/properties/states if need be.
It really depends on the complexity and contents of your Activity/Fragment/Layout/View/Preference etc etc and if you even really need to remember the state things were a few moments ago.
onSaveInstanceState(Bundle outState)
This method is called before an activity may be killed so that when it comes back some time in the future it can restore its state.
Do not confuse this method with activity lifecycle callbacks such as onPause, which is always called when an activity is being placed in the background or on its way to destruction, or onStop which is called before destruction. One example of when onPause and onStop is called and not this method is when a user navigates back from activity B to activity A: there is no need to call onSaveInstanceState on B because that particular instance will never be restored, so the system avoids calling it. An example when onPause is called and not onSaveInstanceState is when activity B is launched in front of activity A: the system may avoid calling onSaveInstanceState on activity A if it isn't killed during the lifetime of B since the state of the user interface of A will stay intact.
onRestoreInstanceState(Bundle savedInstanceState)
This method is called after onStart() when the activity is being re-initialized from a previously saved state.
Most implementations will simply use onCreate(Bundle) to restore their state, but it is sometimes convenient to do it here after all of the initialization has been done or to allow subclasses to decide whether to use your default implementation. The default implementation of this method performs a restore of any view state that had previously been frozen by onSaveInstanceState(Bundle).
On the default handling of your views with this pair of methods:
The default implementation takes care of most of the UI per-instance state for you by calling View.onSaveInstanceState() on each view in the hierarchy that has an id, and by saving the id of the currently focused view (all of which is restored by the default implementation of onRestoreInstanceState). If you override this method to save additional information not captured by each individual view, you will likely want to call through to the default implementation, otherwise be prepared to save all of the state of each view yourself.
Related
i have a fragment that is hosted inside of an activity. when user prsses the back button i need to save the model data and have it available the next time user opens the fragment/activity. But just while in the app, it does not need to be persisted to disk. So for example if user destroyed the process, then there is no need to keep the model data, it can be fetched from network again.
what i have tried:
icePick and onSavedInstance calls but these dont seem to kick in when user presses the back button on the fragment. tell me if im wrong.
here is what i have implemented in my fragment:
#Override
public void onSaveInstanceState(Bundle outState) {
super.onSaveInstanceState(outState);
outState.putParcelable("myModel", Parcels.wrap(myModel));
}
i am using the parceler library if that makes any difference. I can also convert the code to kotlin if required. when i hit the back button the fragment gets popped off the stack and the activity contain it calls onDestroy but im not getting any call back in onSaveInstanceState. Also when i check in onCreate() savedInstanceState is null. I have not overrided onSavedInstance in the activity, just in the fragment. What am i doing wrong ?
i had a though to use a database to do this, but i just need it while in memory and there should be a way to do this without a DB.
from what i learned if user hits the back button onSaveInstance is not called by the system:
If an activity is in the foreground, and the user taps the Back button, the activity transitions through the onPause(), onStop(), and onDestroy() callbacks. In addition to being destroyed, the activity is also removed from the back stack.
It is important to note that, by default, the onSaveInstanceState()
callback does not fire in this case.
source: here
#onSaveInstanceState of fragment is strictly coupled to activity lifecycle
According to doc
Called to retrieve per-instance state from an activity before being
killed
You operates only with fragments and activity is left untouched,
so this method is definitely can't be used in your case and shouldn't.
My suggestion is to use some kind of persistent storage though interface. It could be in memory storage (any type of singleton, like suggested in comments. It may be scoped to app or activity or to custom case (you have to control manually cache lifecycle) and injected with dagger, for example), shared-preferences based storage, database storage. It is easy to test if you follow dependency injection patterns & use structural pattern like MVP (but it is not a point of this question)
So store the data in the repository on change or in the onPause method (because it is the last guaranteed to call when screen is being gone). And restore it in onCreate
I have three activities in my application.
From the first one i started the second, and from the second i started the third. When the process of my app is killed by the system and i launch it again i see only the last active activity is being created. And it seems the only one that gets Bundle object as a parameter to its onCreate method.
There are two things I am curious of:
If the activity at the top of the stack is the only one that gets its bundle, why each of my activities got their callback (onSaveInstanceState) called just before their onStop() method.
If only one of my activities can retain original state, what about the others? Did they lose all their state just because system decided to kill my app process? Should i restore them manually? What about views on them? (normally views get their state back without needing me to put something into the bundle and later restore if i am not mistaken)
The default behavior is this (tested on 4.1.1):
When you start a new activity, onSaveInstanceState of the previous activity is being called
When the system kills the app, the state of activities back-stack is being saved
When you restart the app, the last seen activity is being shown and its onRestoreInstanceState is being called
When you navigate back and pop activities from the back stack, state of each of them will be restored with a call to onRestoreInstanceState passing the bundle that was obtained from the first step above.
Therefore, the answers to your questions are:
All activities will be restored, but not at once - the last one seen is restored immediately, while the others will be restored when you navigate back.
All simple views (e.g. EditText) will automatically restore their state. In order for this to happen, you need to make sure that a) you did not override onSaveInstanceState or onRestoreInstanceState without call to super implementations b) the views that should be restored have unique IDs in view hierarchy
onStop is called on previous activity when you create a new activity, so you are saving the state! Your previous activity's onCreate will be called, if it's destroyed, so don't worry about recreating views. Are you sure app is killed? An app is not killed when it loses view. Android will keep it in memory as long as it doesn't need to free memory.
Why does the system call onSaveInstanceState() when the activity enters the stop state?
Since the activity's instance s kept resident in memory when it is stopped, and its current state is lost only when the activity is destroyed.
So the system should rather call the onSaveInstanceState() before entering or inside onDestroy() rather than onStop().
Isn't it?
Because onDestroy() is not guaranteed to be called (generally, only if you finish() your activity) and because after onStop(), your activity is not guaranteed to remain. It might be destroyed for any number of reasons once it is not the foreground activity.
I always assume that after onPause(), the next callback to be made might be onCreate(), that way, I never get surprised ;)
onSaveInstanceState saves the view state of the Fragment/Activity as well as custom instance data. The view objects can and will be destroyed after onStop, so onSaveInstanceState must be called to preserve their state.
This is discussed in the docs for Activity.onSaveInstanceState:
The default implementation takes care of most of the UI per-instance state for you by calling onSaveInstanceState() on each view in the hierarchy that has an id, and by saving the id of the currently focused view (all of which is restored by the default implementation of onRestoreInstanceState(Bundle). If you override this method to save additional information not captured by each individual view, you will likely want to call through to the default implementation, otherwise be prepared to save all of the state of each view yourself.
To save additional data about the activity state, you must override the onSaveInstanceState() callback method. The system calls this method when the user is leaving your activity and passes it the Bundle object that will be saved in the event that your activity is destroyed unexpectedly. If the system must recreate the activity instance later, it passes the same Bundle object to both the onRestoreInstanceState() and onCreate() methods.
When OS will completely forget the state about an Activity and all information relate to an Activity ( any records about an Activity) ?
In other words when it will make Bundle to be a new instance?
I found the below explanation but it does not explain this "Killing bundle" point?
http://grepcode.com/file/repository.grepcode.com/java/ext/com.google.android/android/4.3_r2.1/android/app/Activity.java#Activity.onSaveInstanceState%28android.os.Bundle%29
Called to retrieve per-instance state from an activity before being killed so that the state can be restored in onCreate(android.os.Bundle) or onRestoreInstanceState(android.os.Bundle) (the android.os.Bundle populated by this method will be passed to both).
This method is called before an activity may be killed so that when it comes back some time in the future it can restore its state. For example, if activity B is launched in front of activity A, and at some point activity A is killed to reclaim resources, activity A will have a chance to save the current state of its user interface via this method so that when the user returns to activity A, the state of the user interface can be restored via onCreate(android.os.Bundle) or onRestoreInstanceState(android.os.Bundle).
Do not confuse this method with activity lifecycle callbacks such as onPause(), which is always called when an activity is being placed in the background or on its way to destruction, or onStop() which is called before destruction. One example of when onPause() and onStop() is called and not this method is when a user navigates back from activity B to activity A: there is no need to call onSaveInstanceState(android.os.Bundle) on B because that particular instance will never be restored, so the system avoids calling it. An example when onPause() is called and not onSaveInstanceState(android.os.Bundle) is when activity B is launched in front of activity A: the system may avoid calling onSaveInstanceState(android.os.Bundle) on activity A if it isn't killed during the lifetime of B since the state of the user interface of A will stay intact.
The default implementation takes care of most of the UI per-instance state for you by calling android.view.View.onSaveInstanceState() on each view in the hierarchy that has an id, and by saving the id of the currently focused view (all of which is restored by the default implementation of onRestoreInstanceState(android.os.Bundle)). If you override this method to save additional information not captured by each individual view, you will likely want to call through to the default implementation, otherwise be prepared to save all of the state of each view yourself.
If called, this method will occur before onStop(). There are no guarantees about whether it will occur before or after onPause().
There are many cases where this could occur:
Here is a small topic on reference mentioning different
use-cases about recreating activities.
If you want more control over the application life cycle:
Take a look a the application object for more information.
Personal advice:
I think you should not care about when/what, This is something the
android system will manage for you, your code should be optimized to
handle all usecases (when the bundle will be null or not). A bundle
should only be used to handle state-keeping, if you want to
persist data you should take a look at fileI/O, SQLlite or shared
preference.
I am refering to http://developer.android.com/reference/android/app/Activity.html.
I have an activity which can be "interrupted" by the user, e.g. the user opens the menu to call the preferences screen. When calling the preference screen onSaveInstanceState(Bundle) is called and I can save my data. That's fine so far. But upon pressing the back button onRestoreInstanceState(Bundle savedInstanceState) is NOT called.
So how can I save my state? Do I have to do it when calling the new activity? But how?
The only way I can think of, is saving the state by passing the state to the new activity, do nothing there with the saved data, return it to the first activity and restore the state in onActivitResult. But that would mean that I have to pass data back and forth just to restore the state. Doesn't seem to be a nice solution.
Probably a bad answer, but are you sure onRestoreInstanceState needs to be called?
The point of the bundle and onSaveInstanceState / onCreate with bundle / onRestoreInstanceState is to save transient data for an activity that is in the history stack, in case the activity must be killed to reclaim some memory. If it is killed, the activity can be restored, as if it were never killed, via onCreate / onRestonreInstanceState. However, if the activity was not killed, there may be no need to restore its transient data - presumably it is just as it was.
The Android documentation is careful to point out that onSaveInstanceStae / onRestoreInstanceState are not lifecycle methods, so aren't guaranteed to be called during lifecycle state transitions. If you need to hook into certain lifecycle transitions, take a look at the lifecycle hook methods. For example, onResume is called when the activity becomes the foreground activity and onPause is called when it is no longer the foreground activity.
Have a look at the Application Fundamentals, specifically this part:
Unlike onPause() and the other methods discussed earlier, onSaveInstanceState() and onRestoreInstanceState() are not lifecycle methods. They are not always called. For example, Android calls onSaveInstanceState() before the activity becomes vulnerable to being destroyed by the system, but does not bother calling it when the instance is actually being destroyed by a user action (such as pressing the BACK key). In that case, the user won't expect to return to the activity, so there's no reason to save its state.
Because onSaveInstanceState() is not always called, you should use it only to record the transient state of the activity, not to store persistent data. Use onPause() for that purpose instead.
Basically, any persistant data should be written out in your onPause() method and read back in onResume(). Check out the Data Storage article for ways of saving data.
Your ListView should not be cleared after returning from the Pref screen unless the Activity has been destroyed while the Pref screen was showing (in which case onCreate should have been called with the saved bundle).
The savedInstanceState is only used when the Activity has been destroyed and needs to be recreated. In this case, it looks like your ListActivity has not been destroyed.
Are you clearing your ListView manually somewhere?