Fragment and parent activity life cycle together - android

I was following these four topics Creating a Fragment, Handling the Fragment Lifecycle , Managing the Activity Lifecycle and Pausing and Resuming an Activity. So I am in a little doubt about this.
My question is
If A Activity call B Activity through Intent but A does not call finish() method then A will be in Pause state if B is Transparent or SemiTransparent and in Stop state if B is Opaque. Am I right?
If A Activity contains Fragment F then if A will go to Pause state then F will go to Pause state and if A will be in Stop state then F will be in Stop state too. Am I right?
If A calls B Activity and B is Transparent then A will be in Pause state and F will too. If B call finish() then A will come to Resume state but what will happen to F? will it come to resume from pause? If it is then how and what steps because I have not seen any direct link in Fragment life cycle which indicates onPause() to onResume() directly as Activity can do.
Hope I am able to ask what I want. Sorry for my bad Englsh.

You can't be sure that only onPause will be called on A if B is SemiTransparent or partially visible as I understand it:
Paused
Another activity is in the foreground and has focus, but this
one is still visible. That is, another activity is visible on top of
this one and that activity is partially transparent or doesn't cover
the entire screen. A paused activity is completely alive (the Activity
object is retained in memory, it maintains all state and member
information, and remains attached to the window manager), but can be
killed by the system in extremely low memory situations.
Yes, you are right:
The lifecycle of the activity in which the fragment lives directly
affects the lifecycle of the fragment, such that each lifecycle
callback for the activity results in a similar callback for each
fragment. For example, when the activity receives onPause(), each
fragment in the activity receives onPause().
However, the opposite is not true, meaning that if a fragment receives onStop, that does not guarantee that the Activity's onStop will be called.
I am not quite sure what you mean by your last sentence or how you have tested this. According to the Fragment documentation:
public void onResume ()
Called when the fragment is visible to the user
and actively running. This is generally tied to Activity.onResume of
the containing Activity's lifecycle
It says generally because it depends on how the fragment is handled by the activity.

If A Activity call B Activity through Intent but A does not call finish() method then A will be in Pause state if B is Transparent or SemiTransparent and in Stop state if B is Opaque. Am I right?
Yes true
If A Activity contains Fragment F then if A will go to Pause state then F will go to Pause state and if A will be in Stop state then F will be in Stop state too. Am I right?
Yes correct
If A calls B Activity and B is Transparent then A will be in Pause state and F will too. If B call finish() then A will come to Resume state but what will happen to F? will it come to resume from pause? If it is then how and what steps because I have not seen any direct link in Fragment life cycle which indicates onPause() to onResume() directly as Activity can do.
What you understood is correct, even in this scenario also fragment will be moved from onPause to onResume state just like an activity.
But unfortunately there is not much documentation about this in developer android.
This might be because they wanted to avoid complicated diagrams which can create more confusion.

Related

how to call OnResume and Onpause methods in fragment?

i have two fragments A and B.here I am Replacing fragment B from A And then fragment A from B in between i am showing toast in onPause method and onResume method but some how its not working could any one explain me why with code ?
The fragments onResume() or onPause() will be called only when the Activities onResume() or onPause() is called. They are tightly coupled to the Activity.
Managing the lifecycle of a fragment is a lot like managing the lifecycle of an activity.
Resumed :->
The fragment is visible in the running activity.
Paused :->
Another activity is in the foreground and has focus, but the activity in which this fragment lives is still visible (the foreground activity is partially transparent or doesn't cover the entire screen).
Stopped :->
The fragment is not visible. Either the host activity has been stopped or the fragment has been removed from the activity but added to the back stack. A stopped fragment is still alive (all state and member information is retained by the system). However, it is no longer visible to the user and will be killed if the activity is killed.
for more information read from android docs

Android Activity Back Stack Navigation issue

I have researched numerous posts regarding Activity back stacks, as well as the Android Developer website, but still can't find a solution to a problem I'm having.
Scenario:
I have Activity A, I navigate to Actvity B, from A and then press the back button to go to Activity A again:
Actvity A --> Activity B --> Actvity A
Nothing out of the ordinary..
Problem
When I press the back button to go to from Activity B --> Activity A, Activity B is not destroyed straight away, as expected it goes into a pause state and this is where I have strange problem. If I want to return to Activity B from Activity A and IF Activity B is still in a pause state all its life cycle methods are called when use startActivity(B) from Activity A:
Activity B - onCreate() > onPause > onStop > onDestroy <-- why is this happening
At this point, to me it shouldn't exist anymore, and I can't explain why it went through all its lifecycle methods, rather than just the start initialisation lifecycle methods. The fall out from this strange behaviour is that the Activity is still visible on screen but doesn't populate a RecyclerView which in first initialisation did so as expected. At this point if I press back Activity B enters a pause state again.
If Activity B is in a pause state (Activity A is at top of stack) and the framework ends Activity B through lifecycle callbacks and I navigate to Activity B again from A it works as expected (RecyclerView is populated), basically a fresh instance always works fine.
All I can assume, when referring to the Activity Lifecycle diagram, is that Activity B enters a pause state, however is destroyed without calling onStop, onDestroy etc.. meaning any Activity clean up operations I have in those callbacks aren't happening?
Things I've Tried
Changing various Intent filters, and combinations, when starting Activity B:
FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK
FLAG_ACTIVITY_CLEAR_TOP
FLAG_ACTIVITY_SINGLE_TOP
Calling finish() when onBackPressed() is called in Activity B
Various other fingers crossed and hope changes, nothing seems to work.
Can anyone help please!
Ok, so I found the answer to the problem - not obvious at first, but now I understand what was happening.
The root cause of the problem was to do with 2 instances of the same Activity (Activity B) referencing the same Objects (Objects supplied from DI library).
Firstly when returning to Activity A from Activity B, Activity B was not immediately destroyed, and this causes a complication - this instance would never be reused, however still existed for a period of a few seconds. In this situation when using startActivity(B) from Activity A it would create a new instance and destroy the old (hence why I was seeing logging in both creation and activity ending callbacks), if it still existed. In this scenario both instances were sharing the same object, and this object "cleaned up" the Activity when destroyed. So the object (Presenter in this case) was being told by the old instance that it should clean up the Activity as its being destroyed, however this was not the case, because a new instance had been created.
The solution
Quite simple really, every time a new instance of Activity B was created, store in the Presenter a unique number (startId), and when Activity B called onDestroy() pass its current unique number, and check they match - if they don't match its not the latest instance, so do nothing. Very similar idea when you want to stop a Service, and check its the latest Activity calling the service from the startId.
Personally I don't know why Activities aren't destroyed straight away on pressing back, but thats the reason why this was happening.

Will Activity onpause be called when switching between fragments

Right now I have 2 activities. When the second activity is running, the first activity onpause is clicked which means I have to unregister all the listeners (which is not what I want when the app is running, I just wanted them unregistered when the app is in the background).
So would it make sense for me to create 2 fragments with one activity. Then I can unregister the listener when the activity onpause is called (only when app goes to background) but it won't be called when fragments are switched.
Is my understanding correct?
Thank you
This totally depends on the activity that you have used to launch your fragment . If two fragments A and B belong to the same activity, then the moment you switch view from Fragment A to Fragment B, your activity does not go to a paused state, means onPause() won't be called, but is still running which is ideally providing the view for Fragment B.
So, you do not need to unregister the listener on change of Fragment in the same activity.
Please correct me if I am wrong.
Yups Activity onPause() would not be called when switching fragments.

Return to previous Activity without deleting current state - Android

I wrote an Android app with several Activities and a Main Activity. When I go from the Main Activity to lets say Activity B, I want to "pause" the Main Activity, when the back button is pressed it should go back and reactivate the Main Activity instead of calling onCreate().
This shall work with all Activities, so if I click on a button to start Activity B, it shall also reactivate the old Activity B instead of creating a new state with onCreate().
How can I realize this?
PS: I already tried it with parcelable, but this do only work, if I close the application or something unexpected happens.
It's always possible that the first activity may be destroyed when you start another activity. It will be recreated when you go back to it. Every app should be written with this possibility in mind. To make sure your activities can handle being destroyed and recreated, turn on the "don't keep activities" developer option.
It is by default in Android. If you Start Activity B from Activity A then activity A goes in stopped state. Below methods will be called of Activity A
onPause()
onStop()
When you tap on Back key on Activity B. Below methods of Activity A will be called.
onRestart()
onStart()
onResume()
For reactivating Activity B, you can set Activity B launch mode as singleInstance. This will make sure that only single instance of Activity B will be created. onCreate will be not be called again. onNewIntent will be called when that activity is reactivated.
Refer: http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/manifest/activity-element.html#lmode
Activities live in stack order. Each activity has its life cycle. When you close an activity (Activity B in your example) it eventually reaches onDestroy() method and removed from the stack order. It is by default in Android and there's nothing you can do about it.
What you can do is rewrite the onStop() method in Activity B and save some activity data (like text in EditText, for example) in SharedPreferences - read here. Then in your onCreate() method you can call for SharedPreferences, check if it's not empty and restore the text in the EditText by pulling appropriate value by key.

Reconsiling the lifecycle methods and back key

In answering a question here on SO about when onDestroy is called what appears to be an inconsistency in the Android docs arose.
According to the android docs regarding the task and backstack
"When the user presses the Back button, the current activity is popped
from the top of the stack (the activity is destroyed) and the previous
activity resumes (the previous state of its UI is restored). "
However at the same time, the android lifecycle suggests that activities are not automatically destroyed but rather paused if the UI is partially hidden, stopped if the UI is totally hidden, and destroyed only if the system is low on resources.
These are two opposite positions. So my questions is - which is it?
Shout out to #Raghunandan for going back and forth with me in comments for a while. Hopefully we will get an answer.
They are both correct in their context. Maybe the lifecycle should say "destroyed only if system is low on resources OR it is popped form the stack".
Consider this for example. You start with activity A, then start activity B from A, then start activity C from B.
Now both A and B are paused and stopped, but not destroyed.
If C is heavy on resources, A or B may be destroyed.
Now press Back button from Activity C, you are back to Activity B
Activity C is paused, stopped and destroyed .
Now press Back button again, you are back to Activity A
Activity B is paused, stopped, and destroyed
System tries to keep all the activity instances so they can be re-opened quickly. But when an activity is popped from the stack, there is no way for user to re-open them in future, at least not the same instance.
There is no contradiction in these two statements.
onDestroy is called when you press BACK unless you override onBackPressed not to call finish() or do a strange thing of overriding finish and not calling super.finish().
If you don't stop the call to Activity.finish, onDestroy is always called.
The other statement speaks nothing about pressing BACK and I can find nowhere under the link you have provided here that
and destroyed only if the system is low on resources.
Additinally to onDestroy being called when app is low on resources (which strangely doesn't happen on my phone; I get OOM) it is called when 20 other Activities globally (from all applications) are started after this one.
I also encouarge you to check out yet another answer on when onDestroy is called again for a real reason of onDestroy not being called.

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