Lets say I have 2 activities:
A: A ListView displaying articles titles. Data is fetched from a web server and converted from XML to a list of ArticleSummary. Only user titles and id are returned by the server. Click on a title starts activity B.
B: A form to edit an article. Article is fetched from server. When the user hits OK, modifications are sent to the server and activity closed.
When the user go back to activity A, I would like to update the article title without any additional web request.
I was thinking about the following solution:
When article is modified, send a broadcast event with article id and new attributes values.
Listen for this event on activity A
Update the ArticleSummary object
notify data changed on ListView
Is there a better approach ?
If you want to have a shared data model between different Activities, you can place it in an extension of the Application class. Or, you can use a singleton. Just reload the data from the shared location when the ListView activity is restarted.
As Fredley alluded to, if you have are communicating with a server you should be sure to do so in a separate background thread.
you can also use startActivityForResult() to launch activity and managed returned data.
Check the "Returning a Result from a Screen" section in the part below.
http://developer.android.com/guide/appendix/faq/commontasks.html
Related
Hello Everyone,
I had do a search on activity retain state.So I am getting to options/solutions for that:-
Using savedInstanceState() and retainInstanceState() methods.
Using Parent Child hierarchy declare in manifest and its working.
(Example Url:-How can I return to a parent activity correctly? I had same problem mention in Note scetion of the answer.That case is match with my problem.
So,I want to retain the activity states just like Whats app(call/chats/contacts fragments).
But In My scenario,I am fetching the contacts from server.So how can I persist my data while switching between chat and my fragment activity?
So while timing to fetch new data of my contact list from server.I want to save ui of my listview/recyclerview with old data previously I had.
Also suggest which method is good from above two methods or need to implement in other way.
I have got 2 activities - "A" contains fragment with a list of conversations, "B" represents a conversation (shows it's messages), in B I can also send a new message.
I would like to be able to update A's list of conversations every time a message is sent in B, so when I click android's back button, A activity's view is updated.
The core of the problem for me, is that I'm not starting A through an Intent when I click the android's back button, so I don't know how to get this effect.
Thank you for your help!
When A is on the backstack, there's no guarantee that an instance of A even exists in memory. The answer to the question of how to manipulate A from B is don't.
Some correct ways of doing it:
If your model (the list of conversations) is Parcelable or Serializable, you can pass it between activities via Intent. You can pass it back from B to A if you start B for result and retrieve it from the Intent returned to A's onActivityResult.
Make the model persistent, like in a database or SharedPreferences file.
Put the model in a bound Service. This would be faster than having each activity load it from persistent storage, but you may still need to make it persistent so you don't lose it when the Service shuts down.
We are using Retrofit and Activeandroid for my project.
Currently we are facing an issue.
The pattern which we follow in our project is, We get data from server and save it into local database and after data saved we call routine which fetches data from database and populate UI this all happens in single Activity..
Now we have an activity which makes 3 server request, and due to which the amount of code in activity increased.
We are trying to reduce Activity code by creating fragment for the activity and giving responsibility of fetching data and displaying data to Fragment. Rest call will be made by activity. Now once the data is loaded from all the 3 request we need to inform fragment about data is loaded, what is the best way for this.
And is it even possible to send data to fragment once it is loaded.. or the approach we are following is not correct..
Please guide us on this..
Edit1
I read about EventBus. Can event bus solve this problem or it will effect the efficiency.
If you are storing those Fragment instances in your Activity then it will be much easier.
1) Create loadNewdata(DataType data) method in your Fragment.
2) Pass the data into the Fragment after getting response from server in your Activity
((YourFragment)fragment).loadNewdata(yourData);
I would suggest to use Otto.
By this you do not need to store your data in local db(if you don't want it).Just simply post your responce whenever you received from rest API. As Otto also provides the functionality of sharing custom objects between fragments/Activity. It also helps you to make your code modular.
You will find a working example here & here.
You can use Interfaces for this and send data to activity.when response come back pass reference of to show which fragment data needs to be populate the UI.
I'm parsing a huge xml to display a list of titles in a listview in activity A. However the same xml also has details for a list item which needs to be shown in a different view (like list mail subjects/view mail details scenario).
On click event of this list i dont want to load a new activity with a bundle, parse the same xml and show detailed view, while i have the required data in activity A itself.
I figured out a way to hide show layouts in my XML to do this as required, but handling back button is an issue. I can probably do this by capturing back button action, but want to know whether there is a better solution for this.
Like broadcasting an intent to A (from A itself) and somehow managing to add that to the activity stack.
Excuse if there is a duplicate question, couldnt find one when i searched.
BTW, i dont want to do a solution with a database caching.
I would handling the back press. Just use a flag within your activity that tells you in which view you are (so back within the detailed view shows you the overview view).
Another way would be to save the values in your applicationContext. Much easier way to do it than database usage.
Take a look at an answer here: How to declare global variables in Android?
But I would definitely go with handling back presses. I have a solution similar to this where I use the same listview in the layout and instead I use different adapters depending on which detailed view the user is in.
Handling back press is the easiest way to go.
Else you could also pass the information to view as Intent extra to the second activity.
Another possibility is to have a local service running in the background and in charge of loading your XML and offering access to its information in a convenient way.
You can also stuff the XML content in an Application object of your own. However I have had not so great experience with that option in some projects.
I would use a second activity. Pass additional data (like contact list, message details, etc.) to it and display it. How you keep parsed XML in memory is up to you to decide (static member? yuck! but it works).
Now back to original Activity. Does your source XML change a lot? Maybe you can parse it and put all data into a DB so that you could retrieve necessary (and hierarchical) data quicker. This way you do not need to deal with storing lots of data in memory, re-parsing and you could perform search faster.
On click event of this list i dont want to load a new activity with a bundle, parse the same xml and show detailed view, while i have the required data in activity A itself.
Cache the parsed XML in a static data member. Your activities that need the data look at the static data member first, then kick off the parsing if and only if that cache is not there.
IOW, this is not an activity problem, but a data model problem. Do a better job with your data model, and your activities can behave naturally.
Let say that I have two Activity to develop in Android. Upon the end user click a button in Activity A, the application supposed to pull data off a JSON API and present that information on Activity B.
So my question is, what's the best practice or pattern? i.e.
Activity A will call an AsyncTask and perform JSON call. Pull the data, push it into the Intent via putExtra, and call Activity B?
Activity A will call Activity B, Activity B onCreate will call an AsyncTask and perform the JSON call?
Other suggestions?
Which one is the prefer pattern?
And which gives better user experience? (e.g. imagine where the error dialog will be if connection fail to the server.)
I think normally something of your #2 approach is done. In most cases, though, you need to tell Activity B what type of information to request from the JSON API. So say in Activity A you are choosing an item from a list, and Activity B will get more information about that item. In this example Activity A will simply pass a reference to which item was selected, and then Activity B can use that reference to make a JSON request for more information about that item. Does that make sense?
I usually try to pass as little information as I can in Intent extras so I would steer clear of your first solution.