Android Fragment View State Loss When Using FragmentTransaction.replace() - android

I am having a pretty big issue and I am not quite understanding what is happening. I am developing an application that uses Fragments (from the support library) and am using FragmentTransaction.replace() to place new Fragments on to the back stack and replace the old one. The code looks as follows:
FragmentManager fm = getSupportFragmentManager();
FragmentTransaction ft = ft.beginTransaction();
// Animations in my res/anim folder
ft.setCustomAnimations(R.anim.slide_in_right, R.anim.slide_out_left, R.anim.slide_in_left, R.anim.slide_out_right);
ft.replace(R.id.fragment_container, newFragment, tag);
ft.addToBackStack(null);
ft.commit();
This is successful in replacing my fragment. My issue is the following. In one Fragment, I have a list of items that is built from user input. Now, when the user clicks next and then clicks the back button (to return to the list), the list is empty because the view is destroyed. Now, I have noted the following:
onSaveInstanceState is not called. I believe this is because that is only called when the parent Activity tells it to. Based on the docs: " There are many situations where a fragment may be mostly torn down (such as when placed on the back stack with no UI showing), but its state will not be saved until its owning activity actually needs to save its state.". Apparently, performing a replace on the FragmentTransaction is not one of those times. Does anyone have confirmation on this or a better explanation?
setOnRetainInstanceState(true) is not helpful in this situation. Again, I believe this has to do with info from the docs: "Control whether a fragment instance is retained across Activity re-creation (such as from a configuration change)". I am not performing any action in re-creating the activity so this is of no use.
So, I guess my main question is: is there a way to preserve the View state (simply retain the Fragment) when using replace? There is FragmentTransaction.add(), but there are a few issues with this as well. One being that the exit animation is not performed, thus the animation is not correct. Another is that the new Fragment that the old fragment (the one that is being put into a non-visible state) is still clickable. For example, if I have a ListFragment, and I place a content fragment on top of that by using add, I can still click the list items in the ListFragment.

Without being able to see the code of your fragments this is a bit of a guess, but in the past I've run into this same issue and I've found that resetting the adapter in your ListFragment in onViewStateRestored seems to do the trick.
public void onViewStateRestored (Bundle savedInstanceState)
{
super.onViewStateRestored (savedInstanceState);
setListAdapter(new ArrayAdapter(Activity, R.layout.nav_item, objects));
}
Which is weird considering the documentation states that this method is called after onActivityCreated but before onStart. But it seems that it is also called at other times because when the most recent fragment transaction is popped off the back stack this method is called before the previously replaced fragment is displayed. The activity that owns the fragments has not been paused or obscured in any way, so according to the docs onViewStateRestored should not be called since just the fragments were modified. But this seems to work anyway.

It sounds like you simply need to make sure you have properly implemented onCreateView and onDestroyView. The situation you are describing seems to indicate that when the list fragment is put on the back stack (as a result of the replace transaction) Android is calling onDestroyView to free up some resources. However, it apparently has not destroyed the list fragment because when you tap back you are getting back the same instance of the fragment.
Assuming this is all true then, when the user taps back Android will call onCreateView. Any state that you have stored in the fragment's instance variables should still be there and all you need to do is repopulate the view...perhaps set the adapter on the ListView or whatever.
Also make sure your onSaveInstanceState() callback actually does save any instance state that you need to rebuild the view. That way if the fragment actually does get completely destroyed the FragmentManager can restore the state when it needs to recrete the fragment later.

Related

What Fragments am I hosting and displaying?

Is there a way to know which Fragment is currently displayed in a given <fragment> container of an Activity without keeping track of all the changes via the onAttachFragment callback?
Is it even possible to know which fragments are displayed when fragment transactions can take place when the user presses the back key? In this latter case, i.e. when a Fragment is re-displayed due to a back, the onAttach is not called.
In my experience, the only way to know for sure which fragment is being displayed is to keep track of that carefully yourself.
For example, you could make a variable in your Activity:
Fragment mCurrentDisplayedFragment;
and then whenever the user requests a different fragment do:
mCurrentFragment = (Fragment) userRequestedFragment;
fragmentManager.replace(container, mCurrentFragment, tag);
Then, whenever you needed to do things to the currently displayed fragment, you could triage it by try/catching a cast or with instanceof.
You could also handle the back pressed behavior by overriding that method in the activity:
#Override
public void onBackPressed() {
int stackSize = fragmentManager.getBackStackEntryCount();
// This counts up from the bottom so the most recent fragment is the biggest number/size
backFragId = fragmentManager.getBackStackEntryAt(stackSize);
// Get a handle on the fragment that is about to be popped
mCurrentFragment = fragmentManager.findFragmentById(backFragId);
super.onBackPressed();
}
Also, are you sure that onAttach is not called when a fragment is popped off the stack? I seem to remember that it will be, and you can call through the interface created there (if you have one and the activity implements it) to register the fragment as the current fragment in the activity at the time.
But to directly answer your question, there isn't a built in way to just know what fragment is currently displayed (and there could be more than one!). The implementation details of that are up to you. Hopefully I've given you some ideas of how it could be handled though. You might also find the FragmentManager documentation helpful.
Each time when you add/replace fragment to the container, use tag for it:
FragmentTransaction ft = getFragmentManager().beginTransaction();
ft.add(R.id.container, fragment, tag).commit();
then you can find out the fragment is current visible or not:
Fragment fg = getFragmentManger().findFragmentByTag(tag);
if(fg.isVisible())
//fg is the current visible fragment
Hope this help!

Android FragmentManagerImpl.dispatchResume() resuming fragments out of order

I am hitting a very strange problem in Android and I can't figure out why it's happening or how to code around it. I truly believe this to be an Android bug.
I have a MainActivity which contains a FrameLayout named main_container (its height and width are both match_parent as each fragment should be the only fragment "showing" to the user). From MainActivity, I add Fragment A like so:
mFragmentManager.beginTransaction()
.replace(R.id.main_container, frag, fragTag)
.commit();
From there, Fragment A, upon a user's click of a view, will add Fragment B like so ("frag" and "fragTag" are different values than the above code snippet):
mFragmentManager.beginTransaction()
.setCustomAnimations(R.anim.slide_in_right, 0, 0, R.anim.slide_out_right)
.add(R.id.main_container, frag, fragTag)
.addToBackStack(null)
.commit();
And from here, Fragment B will add Fragment C like so (again, "frag" and "fragTag" are different values than the previous two snippets):
mFragmentManager.beginTransaction()
.setCustomAnimations(R.anim.slide_in_right, 0, 0, R.anim.slide_out_right)
.add(R.id.main_container, frag, fragTag)
.addToBackStack(null)
.commit();
So at this point, in the backstack, we should have Fragment A -> Fragment B -> Fragment C.
Fragment C invokes the MediaPicker upon the user's click of a view. Doing so calls all fragments' onPause methods and the app is put in the background. Now when the user selects an image, the application is resumed but here's where the bug happens... it resumes in this order, as proven with breakpoints in each fragments' onResume method:
Fragment A -> Fragment C -> Fragment B
This causes all sorts of issues because each of my fragments registers itself as a listener in the MainActivity to handle back button clicks. This logic relies on that ordering being correct. For some reason, it's still showing Fragment C on top, but onResume was definitely called out of order.
Perhaps even worse though... rather than clicking for MediaPicker, you can simply rotate the phone to cause a config change. This exhibits the same behavior of reordering to A -> C -> B but in this case it DOES actually show the wrong fragment on top. It SHOWS Fragment B on top.
Is it a design point that you can't rely on Android to resume fragments in the same order you added them to the backstack and I'm supposed to code around it? Or am I doing something wrong? Or is this really an Android bug? I am by far not a newbie to Android development, but this one has me stumped.
EDIT:
I've pinpointed what is going on and apparently it's by design. It seems pretty crazy to me and I disagree with the logic behind it. I may be able to fix this with reflection, but I don't like doing that. Anyways, on to the problem.
The problem is with the way FragmentManagerImpl keeps track of active fragments. It has an ArrayList to keep track of active fragments and when everything is paused (such as in my case where I'm starting an intent to get a photo from media gallery, thus it's leaving my app), upon resuming back into my app, it moves the fragments back to active in the same order they're in that ArrayList. Sounds great, eh?
Well here's my problem. When things are taken OUT of that ArrayList, they don't remove() the item, they just set it to null and then have logic to reuse that empty "slot" (line 1168 in the github link) when the next fragment comes along. In my case, the transient fragment that leaves a hole in the ArrayList is a DialogFragment. Putting it back into terms of my original report, Fragment A shows a DialogFragment... clicking a certain button in that DialogFragment brings up Fragment B. Clicking another view in Fragment B brings up Fragment C. But here's what happens to the ArrayList FragmentManagerImpl keeps track of after clicking the button in the DialogFragment:
{ FragA, null (used to be DialogFragment), FragB }
So apparently DialogFragment was moved out of active state after FragB was moved to active, thus leaving a hole. So now we click the view in FragB to bring up FragC and the ArrayList looks like so:
{ FragA, FragC (reused DialogFragment's slot), FragB }
We go off to the media picker, come back, and voila the fragments are resumed out of order with respect to how I instantiated them in the first place. This makes no sense to me and if you don't step into OS code with breakpoints, you never figure out why Android is not behaving the way you told it to. Seems like it would have been easier to just do an ArrayList.remove() of the fragment you removed, thus leaving no holes.
Like I said, I can probably get around this with reflection... but I'm leery of that because there is also this mIndex variable in all Fragments that corresponds to the index of it's slot in that ArrayList (mActive). So I'd have to be sure to keep those in sync... and now I have a dependency on knowing how the OS code works. :(
This is a known issue. Google "android fragment reordering" and you will get a whole page of links on the subject including some solutions.

Memory leak in FragmentManager

Update:
I think the leak is coming from getActivity().getSupportLoaderManager().restartLoader(getLoaderId(), null, this);
where i have my object implement LoaderCallback. Is there a way for me to clear the callback i tired setting it to
getActivity().getSupportLoaderManager().restartLoader(getLoaderId(), null, null);
but this crashes
Orig:
I have a list of objects in one of my fragments(A). When I navigate forward I add fragment A to the backstack. After I have navigated to a new fragment and I dump the heap. I still see my object in the heap. When I get the shortest path in the dump it looks like below. I can see that in FragmentManagerImpl there is a reference to fragment A in mActive fragments which is keeping my lists object alive.
Is my fragment supposed to stay in mActive fragments or is this a leak?
Adding to backstack
FragmentTransaction transaction = mFragmentManager.beginTransaction();
updateTransactionWith(info.getReplacement(), transaction, "replace");
transaction.addToBackStack(info.getReplacement().getClass().toString());
transaction.commit();
mFragmentManager.executePendingTransactions();
By calling addToBackStack(), you're requesting the FragmentManager that the Fragment being replaced be just stopped and not destroyed because you're either anticipating that a back button press is very likely or, the Fragment is heavy on initialization and you would still like to avoid doing it again even though the user is not very likely to go back.
The docs clearly state that
If you do not call addToBackStack() when you perform a transaction
that removes a fragment, then that fragment is destroyed when the
transaction is committed and the user cannot navigate back to it.
Whereas, if you do call addToBackStack() when removing a fragment,
then the fragment is stopped and will be resumed if the user navigates
back.
Hence, it's not a memory leak and your observations are quite in line with the expected behaviour.
However, just like an Activity, the system may still choose to destroy this Fragment, if it's running out of memory. But, that's expected behaviour too.
It's not a memory leak. You need to decide how to deal with your fragment's state.
Ideally you implement onSaveInstanceState and onViewStateRestored saving your state to the bundle and restoring it from the bundle respectively.
Alternatively, if you're able to re-create your state easily, you may want to save the bother of (re)storing it using the bundle and just null your references in the onPause method and create them during the onResume method. Be aware that onResume gets called even if the fragment has just been created, so be careful not to do that work more than once.
Either way, be sure to null your references to ensure your objects are marked for GC.
The FragmentManager will decide if it needs to discard and recreate the fragment as necessary in order to allow the user to go back to the fragment you added to the stack. In conditions where there's very little else on the stack and/or there's lots of spare memory it will probably just keep a direct reference to the fragment you added to the back stack.
Given all that, you also need to be careful about keeping references to other fragments, activities, etc as that kind of state is difficult to recreate.
The following approach is recommended for providing proper back navigation:
// Works with either the framework FragmentManager or the
// support package FragmentManager (getSupportFragmentManager).
getSupportFragmentManager().beginTransaction()
.add(detailFragment, "detail")
// Add this transaction to the back stack
.addToBackStack()
.commit();
More info:
http://developer.android.com/guide/components/fragments.html
http://developer.android.com/training/implementing-navigation/temporal.html
API docs: http://developer.android.com/reference/android/app/Fragment.html

FragmentManager popBackStack doesn't remove fragment

I'm implementing menu navigation using Fragments. So I begin with Home, and then users can navigate to diferent sections and details of each section.
When a user changes section, then I call pop on the fragmentmanager backstack until I reach Home, and then load the new section.
This is all working as expected. But I'm getting this problem:
load a section that calls setHasOptionsMenu(true) on onResume()
loads another section (old section it's suposed to get out of the stack). I see it OK. No menu is shown
leave the application (for example, go to Android Laucher activity) and then when I return, I see the correct section, but it's showing the Menu of the old Fragment.
I've iterated the backstack and printed each fragment, and there it's not the fragment with the menu.
I put a debug mark on the onResume() method (where the setHasOptionsMenu(true) is flagged) and it indeed enters here, so the Fragment it's still somewhere.
I want to know if I'm doing something wrong and how could I solve it, thx
Update:
I'm using this code to load new fragments
fm.beginTransaction()
.add(container, sectionFragment.getFragment())
.addToBackStack(sectionFragment.getFragmentName())
.commit();
And for remove:
private void clearStack(){
int count = fm.getBackStackEntryCount();
while(count > 1){
fm.popBackStack();
count--;
}
}
NOTE 1: I'm using add instead replace because I don't want to loose the state of my fragment when I navigate back from detail section. When I load another different section, then I call clearStack to pop the stack up to 1, and then loads new fragment. At the end, I'm calling executePendingTransactions() to finish to remove the fragments from the transaction.
NOTE 2: I'm seeing that it is entering on my fragment onDestroy() method, so it is suposed to be destroyed. But I don't know why it is getting called again when the Main activity resumes.
I found that the problem was not in the logic of adding and removing fragment of the stack.
The problem was that some of the fragment loaded another fragments inside of it (it had ViewPager component). Then I thought that when the fragment was removed then these fragments were removed too.
This is true ONLY if you use getChildFragmentManager() method. This method MUST be used when loading fragments inside other fragmets. If not, then the fragments are asociated with the fragments activity.
popBackStack will just revert your last FragmentTransaction.
If you use FragmentTransaction.add, popBackStack will just call FragmentTransacetion.remove.
But if you call FragmentTransaction.replace, popBackStack will call FragmentTransaction.remove and FragmentTransaction.add
For your "NOTE 1" :
FragmentTransaction.replace will not change your fragment state.
I found this question, because after calling
fragmentManager.popBackStack(null, FragmentManager.POP_BACK_STACK_INCLUSIVE);
this code fragmentManager.getFragments().size() returns me the maximum number of fragments, which were in the stack. I checked every fragment on null. And I found that some fragment is null in my case. Maybe it will help someone)
If you are really looking to remove fragments at once then follow:
How to replace Fragments of different types?
Otherwise use replace transaction for fragments to smooth transitiona and hassel free approach, see https://stackoverflow.com/a/23013075/3176433
Also understand Fragment lifecycle,
http://developer.android.com/guide/components/fragments.html
I had a similar problem where the popBackStack() didn't remove my fragment.
However, I noticed that I called the wrong FragmentManager, where I had to call getSupportFragmentMananger() instead of getFragmentManager().
Maybe there is a <fragment> or <androidx.fragment.app.FragmentContainerView> in an activity with android:name="androidx.navigation.fragment.NavHostFragment", app:defaultNavHost="true" and app:navGraph="#navigation/nav_graph".
In this case navigation is held by nav_graph. If you don't want to use NavController and NavHostFragment, maybe you should remove navigation and clean <fragment> tag.

Best way to switch between two fragments

I'm interested in the best way to have a single activity that switches between two fragments.
I've read probably 15 Stack Overflow posts and 5 blogs posts on how to do this, and, while I think I cobbled together a solution, I'm not convinced it's the best one. So, I want to hear people's opinions on the right way to handle this, especially with regards to the lifecycle of the parent activity and the fragments.
Here is the situation in detail:
A parent activity that can display one of two possible fragments.
The two fragments have state that I would like to persist across a session, but does not necessarily need to be persisted between sessions.
A number of other activities, such that the parent activity and the fragments could get buried in the back stack and destroyed due to low memory.
I want the ability to use the back button to move between the fragments (So as I understand it, I can't use setRetainInstance).
In addition to general architecture advice, I have the following outstanding questions:
If the parent activity is destroyed due to low memory, how do I guarantee that the states of both fragments will be retained, as per this post: When a Fragment is replaced and put in the back stack (or removed) does it stay in memory?. Do I just need a pointer to each fragment in the parent activity?
What is the best way for the parent activity to keep track of which fragment it is currently displaying?
Thanks in advance!
I ended up adding both of the fragments using the support fragment manager and then using detach/attach to switch between them. I was able to use commitAllowingStateLoss() because I retain the state of the view elsewhere, and manually set the correct fragment in onResume().
protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
FragmentTransaction fragmentTransaction = getSupportFragmentManager().beginTransaction();
fragmentTransaction.add(R.id.my_layout, new AFragment(), TAG_A);
fragmentTransaction.add(R.id.my_layout, new BFragment(), TAG_B);
fragmentTransaction.commit();
}
public void onResume() {
super.onResume();
if (this.shouldShowA) {
switchToA();
} else {
switchToB();
}
}
private void switchToA() {
AFragment fragA = (AFragment) getSupportFragmentManager().findFragmentByTag(TAG_A);
FragmentTransaction fragmentTransaction = getSupportFragmentManager().beginTransaction();
fragmentTransaction.detach(getSupportFragmentManager().findFragmentByTag(TAG_B));
fragmentTransaction.attach(fragA);
fragmentTransaction.addToBackStack(null);
fragmentTransaction.commitAllowingStateLoss();
getSupportFragmentManager().executePendingTransactions();
}
You might want to consider using a ViewPager in your parent Activity so you can switch between the Fragments.
So you would be able to swipe through them.
if you want to persist their state during a session even if the parent activity is destroyed, you need to make them Parcelable, so you can save the state even if the class isn't instantiated at that time. You also need to do this if your rotating your device and want to keep the current situation/data on the Screen.
You should write them to a Parcelable in their onPause methods and recreate them from it in the onResume one. This way it doesn't matter if they are destroyed or have to be recreated due to changes in the devices orientation.
if you want to be able to switch between those fragments with the Backbutton, you can catch the buttonClick for onBackPressed and handle it accordingly.
If you need to figure out what Fragment your displaying at a given time you ask your ViewPager what Fragment he is displaying at that time, so you don't have to keep track, you can just ask someone who knows, if you need to know it.

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