pass data to background activity without change the current activity - android

I have 2 activity.
Activiy A will list links to download.
Activity B has a listview of download item.
When I click the link in activity A, how to send the link to activity B to download without change activity A (while activity B still downloading on background) ?

You need to understand that Activities Dont need any result to work, activities need data. And Activities can use these data to load contents of its. And there is no use of this data into activity untill its into background. SO Here is solution:
Create some Data ArrayList or Flag, Global to the application.
Changes this Data into Second activity, which is in forground, and want to notify about some result.
When First Activity which is in background, and want to listen results, check for changes into data in onResume method, and on change load new contents.

My approach would be:
Activity A: Shows a list of items to download.
Service B: Downloads the item in the background. Maybe you can queue
multiple download items.
File C: When you finish downloading something you should save that
fact in a file.
Activity D: When this activity starts it should read 'File C' and
display its contents.
You can't really send data to an Activity without starting it. When an Activity is not visible it is pretty much asleep.
You should read this: Application Fundamentals, read it many many times ... then read it again. I still go back and read it after years of working with Android.

Related

Better way to load data for AutocompleteTextView in Android

I've got two Activitys in Android. Lets call them A and B.
Activity A has a ViewPager and its data will be loaded via AsyncTask.
The user can start Activty B from Activity A.
In Activity B I've got an AutocompleteTextView and its content will be loaded with a AsyncTask, too. (The App will only make an request when it is not cached)
My problem is when I search in Activity B, the AutoCompleteTextView will generate too much AsyncTasks and when I leave Activity B it takes a while too load the data for the ViewPager (in Activity A).
I think the App can only handle some of the AsyncTask at the same time. The rest is waiting and when I leave Activity B there are still waiting some AsyncTasks (for AutocomplteTextView)
My question is: How can I improve this. Can I use a Service (with an extra process)

Start activity while pulling data from database

I have an application which stores data in SQLite database. Main activity is just a screen with a single button. When user clicks this buton the second activity opens. The second activity is a list (ListActivity) which should contain all the records from database. Here is the question: which approaches fits better: 1) when button is clicked, start AsyncTask, in doInBackground method pull data from database and send pulled data to the second activity as a parcelable array or 2) start the second activity, in onCreate method pull the data from database and display progress bar while selecting data. I believe it is not based on primary opinion and there should be valuable pros and cons. But I am new to Android and I'm struggling to identify better approach for this. Thanks for your attention.
First approach is not user friendly. Because when user press a button to open different activity(In terms of UI), then user except to show a transition, Not the stuck in first activity. Actually it depend on your application UX design. Also first approach has another problem. If you load data in first activity then you have to transfer many data when you call another activity.
Use the slightly modified second approach. First start the second activity, then call the AsyncTask(in onCreate method) to load the data.
Well, I think the best is starting AsyncTask on clicking button and process data in doInBackground as You said. In onCreate() of second acivity display progress bar, and in doInBackground() send data and display items. It seems to be the best from point of performance.

Android How to transfer data between activities without moving to another activity

How can i transfer data between two activities, without actually move to that activity? The scenario is as follows:
Activity A is a splash screen. While the splash screen is showing, some data is being generated in the background of type ArrayList. After This data is loaded, i need to start Activity B (lets say a Login screen) and just before that i need to transfer the data to Activity C. I know i can use PutExtras for transferring data, but wont this run the target Activity instead only sending the data?
Thanks
The full flow of the app is as follows:
Activity A (splash screen) --> Activity B (Login screen) --> Activity D (some user interface and buttons) --> Activity C (the activity which should be able to load the data generated in the splash screen upon certain Button press).
I think You don't fully understand life cycle of Activity and application.
Rule of thumb, there is always just one activity, (it is the worst scenario when each activity has to be recreated when You go back to it) the one visible at the moment. You can't do things like start activity but don't show it yet or anything like this.
If You have expensive task to do like downloading data do it in AsyncTask
if this task has to be start and finish when You enter and leave Activity A use fragments
if it has to finish once You start whether Activity A is still existing or it was already destroyed use services
Places You can store this loaded data so it may be easily accessed later form any Activity is database with help of Loaders(loader is optional but really nice) or SharedPreferences.
If you want to pass data to an activity that is running and not start a new instance of that activity you just need to set flags on your intent. For example:
Intent i = new Intent()
i.setFlags(Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_SINGLE_TOP);
will not re-launch an activity if it is already running at the top of the stack. If all you want to do is get data to Activity C which is running without starting it again you could try this or one of the other flags. There's a bunch of them. Just look look through the list and see if one fits your needs.

Prevent screen display until after fetching data

Is there any way I can go from one activity to another and delay the display of the screen on the target activity?
What I want to be able to do is to allow the target activity to fetch its required data but not to display anything until does.
I want the screen of the source activity to still be visible until I am ready with the data in the second activity.
Specifically, I am using an AsyncTask to fetch the data.
I know I could fetch the data in the source activity and then send it on to the target activity but this is not viable in our case.
Edit: More Info:
The whole reason I want this is because I am trying to change the structure of certain parts of the current code.
At present the way it works is the the first activity gets the data and then sends it to the second activity as a bundle.
This created problems when the second activity could be invoked from multiple places. It resulted in loads of duplicate code.
So, I decided to move the fetching of the data into the target activity thus cutting out any need for repeating code.
it also makes more sense for the activity to fetch its own data rather than relying on something else sending it.
You should first make a service that runs your async task. Then, start the service from your first activity with startService(new Intent(this, UpdaterServiceManager.class));
When the task ends in the service, start the second activity.
Click here for an excellent service tutorial.
Try to use service for this purpose.

Android restart activity (with AsyncTask) on completion of another activity

I suppose the title is a bit confusing but here is what I'm trying to do:
I have a class called ManageClass which lists the entries of a database. I have written another private class within ManageClass which extends AsyncTask so that I can display a progress dialog while I'm getting the data from the database. Now when I click on an item I create a new Intent which takes me to my ViewItem class. I've added a button there so that the user can delete that particular entry that he/she is looking at. All of the above work fine.
Now I want after deleting that entry to kill the activity and go back to the previous one (the one displaying the list) but I want to refresh the listings.
My problem is that I cant use onResume() cause it will also be called when the activity is resumed after the AsyncTask finishes.
Could anyone help me with that? I'm really stuck... all ideas are welcome!!!
If I understand your app workflow you should use startActivityForResult instead of launching a new Activity via intent.
Look at here fore some example
Basically you can launch a new Activity and wait for a result via callback on the "opener" activity. so you can avoid to put your logic into onResume method

Categories

Resources