I have an app on the Google Play market. For various reasons that I won't bother going into, I have changed the type of some of my preferences. For example a preference type was an Integer and in the most recent version it is now a String. I imagine this isn't good practice but unfortunately I had to do it.
My concern is that when someone updates to the new version their app will crash as the preference types have changed. For this reason I would like to clear the preferences whenever the app is updated (again I realise not ideal!)
Is this possible?
The SharedPreferences.Editor
class has a clear()
function, what removes all your stored preferences (after a commit()
). You could create a boolean flag which will indicate if updated needed:
void updatePreferences() {
SharedPreferences prefs = ...;
if(prefs.getBoolean("update_required", true)) {
SharedPreferences.Editor editor = prefs.edit();
editor.clear();
/*....make the updates....*/
editor.putBoolean("update_required", false)
editor.commit();
}
}
And after that you need to call this in your main (first starting) activity, before you access any preferences.
EDIT:
To get the current version (The versionCode declared in the manifest):
int version = 1;
try {
version = getPackageManager().getPackageInfo(getPackageName(), 0).versionCode;
} catch (NameNotFoundException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
if(version > ...) {
//do something
}
EDIT
If you want to do some updating operation, whenever the version changes, then you can do something like this:
void runUpdatesIfNecessary() {
int versionCode = getPackageManager().getPackageInfo(getPackageName(), 0).versionCode;
SharedPreferences prefs = ...;
if (prefs.getInt("lastUpdate", 0) != versionCode) {
try {
runUpdates();
// Commiting in the preferences, that the update was successful.
SharedPreferences.Editor editor = prefs.edit();
editor.putInt("lastUpdate", versionCode);
editor.commit();
} catch(Throwable t) {
// update failed, or cancelled
}
}
}
You can also append the version number while getting SharedPreferences like this
context.getSharedPreferences("MyKey" + app_version_no, Context.MODE_PRIVATE);
So if you update the app, the version number will change and you will have new set of preferences.
Store version code in default SharedPreferences AND store your others preferences in version specified file , when the version change you can find your old version code and you can have your old preference file and update the new version by old data
int versionCode=0,oldVersion;
try
{
versionCode = getPackageManager().getPackageInfo(getPackageName(), 0).versionCode;
}
catch (PackageManager.NameNotFoundException e)
{}
SharedPreferences prefs =getSharedPreferences("MyPref" + versionCode, Context.MODE_PRIVATE);
SharedPreferences prefsDefault = PreferenceManager.getDefaultSharedPreferences(MainActivity.this);
oldVersion=prefsDefault.getInt("OldVersion",0);
if (oldVersion!=versionCode)
{
if (oldVersion>0)
{
// ToDo Update Preferences
String oldPrefsKey="MyPref" + oldVersion;
SharedPreferences oldPrefs =context.getSharedPreferences(oldPrefsKey, Context.MODE_PRIVATE);
SharedPreferences.Editor pEdit=prefs.edit();
pEdit.putBoolean("clock24",oldPrefs.getBoolean("clock24",false));
pEdit.putBoolean("show_clock",oldPrefs.getBoolean("show_clock",true));
pEdit.commit();
oldPrefs.edit().clear().commit();
if (Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= Build.VERSION_CODES.N) {
deleteSharedPreferences(oldPrefsKey);
} else {
try {
File oldFile=new File(getCacheDir().getParent() + "/shared_prefs/"+oldPrefsKey+".xml");
oldFile.delete();
} catch (Exception e) {
}
}
}
prefsDefault.edit().putInt("OldVersion",versionCode).commit();
}
final String PREFERENCE_NAME = "my_preference";
final String APP_VERSION_CODE = 6; /*change this each time you want to clear
preference in updated app.*/
preferences = getSharedPreferences(PREFERENCE_NAME, MODE_PRIVATE);
if (preferences.getInt(PREFERENCE_VERSION, 0) != APP_VERSION_CODE) {
preferences.edit().clear().apply();
preferences.edit().putInt(PREFERENCE_VERSION, APP_VERSION_CODE).apply();
}