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Android app - delete item from list following an action in another activity

I'm creating an app where I display a list of pending challenges. When the user clicks on a challenge, he can accept it or ignore it.
Here's what I want to do and I don't know how :
if the user accepts or ignore the challenge, call this.finished and remove the challenge from the list
if the back button is pressed, do nothing, the challenge is still visible
In short, if the user really responds to the challenge I don't want it to be displayed in the list, but if he doesn't choose any option and press the back button, he didn't choses one of the two actions so I want that challenge to still be visible in the list.
I don't think it's possible to detect what button I've pressed when i go back to my main activity. I've thought about using global variables, but I don't want to misuse them either.
Just to be clear, I'm not asking how deleting a list item. But when to know deleting one depending of the actions of another activity.

Give your second activity the index you want to remove as a parameter inside the intent and let it finish by returning the index again as an intent extra (by using setresult(Intent i) and then calling finish) inside your first activity catch the result from your second activity by overwriting onActivityResult (http://developer.android.com/reference/android/app/Activity.html#onActivityResult(int, int, android.content.Intent))
see 3.3. Retrieving result data from a sub-activity in http://www.vogella.com/tutorials/AndroidIntent/article.html for a detailed howTo

launching already launched activity from notification creating problematic activity

i have 3 activities A-B-C .Lets say i am on activity B and from a listview there i launch activity C now if a notification comes which has an intent of launching activity C.
So the problem is I am getting multiple instances of activity C
When i use launchMode singleTop or instance or task the problem of multiple activity instance is solved but the newly launced activity does not work properely as it is desired to be.
Please help me out tired of using flags and stuff but not able to overcome this problem.
The scenario is Just like whatsapp , if u r talking to person one and a message of person 2 come as notification ,when u click on that notification the activity relaunches and works properely. This is exactly what i want. Please help me out how to achieve this . :(
Thanxx in advance

What Flags did you try and what exactly is not working, means, how does the Activity behave?
What you describe with WhatsApp could be achieved with two steps:
Use the FLAG_ACTIVITY_SINGLE_TOP for the Activity.
Overwrite the Actvity.onNewIntent(Intent intent) method in the Activity. This method is called instead of creating a new Activity and gives you the new Intent. I assume that the Intent contains all necessary information in the extras.
The user experience should be as follows:
User chooses from the list, which opens the new Activity
He/she can press home or back button from here. This brings the home screen or the list back.
If, for any reason, somebody else calls startActivity for your Activity while it is running, the onNewIntent is called. There you can add code to refresh the content, maybe have an Alert that tells the user that the content has changed, and shows all that to the user.
If the user presses back or home now, he/she will get to the list or home screen
If that is, what you're looking for, then the flag and the method is what you need

Maintain Single instance of an activity

i have button in my first activity called Start.
Now when i click on this button it takes 1 to 2 seconds to load the next activity, now at that time the user clicks on the start button multiple times so what happens is that the next activity will open multiple times.
How to overcome this? Is there any way that even if the user clicks on the Start button multiple times open the activity only once.

Your Options:
On click, disable the button and display a ProgressDialog to the user.
Use the Intent flag FLAG_ACTIVITY_SINGLE_TOP to ensure only one activity is maintained on the stack. Documentation
Use the qualifer launchMode=singleInstance in your AndroidManifest.xml so only one instance of your Activity is allowed at a time. Documentation
I would recommend the first, because it can show the user your application is still working even if it takes a few seconds to do the necessary processing to begin your Activity.

You can put the launch mode of your 2nd activity as "Single Instance" in your manifest file.

Don't use anything like a launchMode or Intent flags. They are used for different purposes.
Description here
What you have to do is:
Show a progress dialog to clearly show the user that an
action(calling 2nd Activity) is in progress. This was user will not
try to click the button multiple times
Simply disable the button's click listener after 1st click. This is not
recommended because user might not be able to know whether he/she
clicked the button. Also this is the case where user tends to click
the button multiple times.

Using Primitive Data Types in another Class and the res/menu/.xml file

I'm a very new to Java. I thought I was doing okay but have now hit a brick wall, so to speak.
The idea is I use the 'home button' '_menu' for the user to choose one of 26 formats. The format they choose has 3 variables. Those 3 variables are then used in the first xml view, along with 2 user inputs to calulate another variable. This variable is then used in a second xml view, along with a third user input here, to calculate the final answer.
I have created the 26 choices and if for example I choose option 5, on the emulator screen I see all the correct values associated with this choice. I don't think those values are getting stored anywhere. I say this because if I come out of that view and return back into it, it's not showing, as in my example, choice 5. It's showing its initial state, as though I was going into it the first time. I assume it's something to do with launching this activity from the start but is there anyway around this. Or really where do I start.
My second question is with the integer variables that I created from this choice. I need to pass them into another java file for the first set of calculations. I've tried to pass the variables/data with the, 'new intent putExtra' but can't get it to work. But I don't think I can use this anyway since the I don't want to launch the second view directly from the res/menu/ .xml view.
Not sure if this is making sense to anyone. Can someone help point me in the right direction?

I don't quite understand your first question, but it sounds like you're launching a new activity and when you quit and come back to it, everything is reset. If you're launching a new activity after selecting the options from your phone's menu button, you should implement a method that saves data to the shared preferences of the main activity. This method should be called on the activities onPause(), onDestroyed(), or onStop() method. You can also add a method on onResume() where the activity checks if there's any data stored in shared preferences and if so, make the desired changes.
As for your second question...I kinda don't understand it either. new intent and putextra is used when you're starting a new activity and want to pass data to it. Views are not "launched" they are only inflated and brought on display whenever you want. I did an app once where I had everything in one activity and just using setContentView() method all the time. In the long run, it just complicated everything. It is easier to keep things simple and launch activities. Here is an example of some variables being passed to a new activity:
On my main activity (FirstActivity) I have:
(when newActivityButton is clicked)
case R.id.newActivityButton:
Intent mIntent = new Intent(FirstActivity.this,SecondActivity.class);
String[] luckyNumbers = {
luckyNumber[0].getText().toString(),
luckyNumber[1].getText().toString(),
luckyNumber[2].getText().toString(),
luckyNumber[3].getText().toString(),
luckyNumber[4].getText().toString(),
luckyNumber[5].getText().toString()};
mIntent.putExtra("luckyNumbers", luckyNumbers);
mIntent.putExtra("message", messageField.getText().toString());
FirstActivity.this.startActivity(mIntent);
break;
luckyNumbers[] is an array of textviews.
Then on my NewActivity onCreate(), I have:
message = getIntent().getExtras().getString("message");
Log.i("TAG", message);
luckyNumbers = getIntent().getExtras().getStringArray("luckyNumbers");
cv.setLuckyNumbers(this.luckyNumbers);
cv.setMessage(this.message);
where cv is just a custom view I created with its own methods

Extras based REORDER_TO_FRONT

In an app I have very reused Activity, that shows a list of stuff happening on a specific day. The day is specified using Intent Extras.
My problem is, that if the user starts at day=1, then chooses day=2 and then day=1, from the menu, then I would like the back button to go to day=2 and then home. That is, I want to do REORDER_TO_FRONT, but not just based on the name of the activity, but also its extras.
There doesn't seam to be any intent flags suitable for this purpose. I've considered implementing my own 'sub activity stack' using onNewIntent, but it probably wouldn't work very well.
Have you tackled similar problems in your apps? Is there perhaps a way to programmatically access the activity stack, and choose which one is suitable to return to?

Manage your own Activity stack! If I'm not mistaken, you use the same Activity to display each day. Make it single top (FLAG_ACTIVITY_SINGLE_TOP). In the launching intent, pass on the current stack, in your example "121".
Respond to the back button event by launching your Activity with a smaller stack: "12" - or if stack is already "", then just let the Activity handle Back event. Then as you mentioned, use the onNewIntent function to update your Activity.