How to save an activity state using save instance

Question

I've been working on the Android SDK platform, and it is a little unclear how to save an application's state. So given this minor re-tooling of the 'Hello, Android' example:

package com.android.hello;

import android.app.Activity;
import android.os.Bundle;
import android.widget.TextView;

public class HelloAndroid extends Activity {

  private TextView mTextView = null;

  /** Called when the activity is first created. */
  @Override
  public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);

    mTextView = new TextView(this);

    if (savedInstanceState == null) {
       mTextView.setText("Welcome to HelloAndroid!");
    } else {
       mTextView.setText("Welcome back.");
    }

    setContentView(mTextView);
  }
}

I thought it would be enough for the simplest case, but it always responds with the first message, no matter how I navigate away from the app.

I'm sure the solution is as simple as overriding onPause or something like that, but I've been poking away in the documentation for 30 minutes or so and haven't found anything obvious.

Answer 1

Meanwhile I do in general no more use

Bundle savedInstanceState & Co

The life cycle is for most activities too complicated and not necessary.

And Google states itself, it is NOT even reliable.

My way is to save any changes immediately in the preferences:

 SharedPreferences p;
 p.edit().put(..).commit()

In some way SharedPreferences work similar like Bundles. And naturally and at first such values have to be read from preferences.

In the case of complex data you may use SQLite instead of using preferences.

When applying this concept, the activity just continues to use the last saved state, regardless of whether it was an initial open with reboots in between or a reopen due to the back stack.

Answer 2

To help reduce boilerplate I use the following interface and class to read/write to a Bundle for saving instance state.

---

First, create an interface that will be used to annotate your instance variables:

import java.lang.annotation.Documented;
import java.lang.annotation.ElementType;
import java.lang.annotation.Retention;
import java.lang.annotation.RetentionPolicy;
import java.lang.annotation.Target;

@Documented
@Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
@Target({
        ElementType.FIELD
})
public @interface SaveInstance {

}

Then, create a class where reflection will be used to save values to the bundle:

import android.app.Activity;
import android.app.Fragment;
import android.os.Bundle;
import android.os.Parcelable;
import android.util.Log;

import java.io.Serializable;
import java.lang.reflect.Field;

/**
 * Save and load fields to/from a {@link Bundle}. All fields should be annotated with {@link
 * SaveInstance}.</p>
 */
public class Icicle {

    private static final String TAG = "Icicle";

    /**
     * Find all fields with the {@link SaveInstance} annotation and add them to the {@link Bundle}.
     *
     * @param outState
     *         The bundle from {@link Activity#onSaveInstanceState(Bundle)} or {@link
     *         Fragment#onSaveInstanceState(Bundle)}
     * @param classInstance
     *         The object to access the fields which have the {@link SaveInstance} annotation.
     * @see #load(Bundle, Object)
     */
    public static void save(Bundle outState, Object classInstance) {
        save(outState, classInstance, classInstance.getClass());
    }

    /**
     * Find all fields with the {@link SaveInstance} annotation and add them to the {@link Bundle}.
     *
     * @param outState
     *         The bundle from {@link Activity#onSaveInstanceState(Bundle)} or {@link
     *         Fragment#onSaveInstanceState(Bundle)}
     * @param classInstance
     *         The object to access the fields which have the {@link SaveInstance} annotation.
     * @param baseClass
     *         Base class, used to get all superclasses of the instance.
     * @see #load(Bundle, Object, Class)
     */
    public static void save(Bundle outState, Object classInstance, Class<?> baseClass) {
        if (outState == null) {
            return;
        }
        Class<?> clazz = classInstance.getClass();
        while (baseClass.isAssignableFrom(clazz)) {
            String className = clazz.getName();
            for (Field field : clazz.getDeclaredFields()) {
                if (field.isAnnotationPresent(SaveInstance.class)) {
                    field.setAccessible(true);
                    String key = className + "#" + field.getName();
                    try {
                        Object value = field.get(classInstance);
                        if (value instanceof Parcelable) {
                            outState.putParcelable(key, (Parcelable) value);
                        } else if (value instanceof Serializable) {
                            outState.putSerializable(key, (Serializable) value);
                        }
                    } catch (Throwable t) {
                        Log.d(TAG, "The field '" + key + "' was not added to the bundle");
                    }
                }
            }
            clazz = clazz.getSuperclass();
        }
    }

    /**
     * Load all saved fields that have the {@link SaveInstance} annotation.
     *
     * @param savedInstanceState
     *         The saved-instance {@link Bundle} from an {@link Activity} or {@link Fragment}.
     * @param classInstance
     *         The object to access the fields which have the {@link SaveInstance} annotation.
     * @see #save(Bundle, Object)
     */
    public static void load(Bundle savedInstanceState, Object classInstance) {
        load(savedInstanceState, classInstance, classInstance.getClass());
    }

    /**
     * Load all saved fields that have the {@link SaveInstance} annotation.
     *
     * @param savedInstanceState
     *         The saved-instance {@link Bundle} from an {@link Activity} or {@link Fragment}.
     * @param classInstance
     *         The object to access the fields which have the {@link SaveInstance} annotation.
     * @param baseClass
     *         Base class, used to get all superclasses of the instance.
     * @see #save(Bundle, Object, Class)
     */
    public static void load(Bundle savedInstanceState, Object classInstance, Class<?> baseClass) {
        if (savedInstanceState == null) {
            return;
        }
        Class<?> clazz = classInstance.getClass();
        while (baseClass.isAssignableFrom(clazz)) {
            String className = clazz.getName();
            for (Field field : clazz.getDeclaredFields()) {
                if (field.isAnnotationPresent(SaveInstance.class)) {
                    String key = className + "#" + field.getName();
                    field.setAccessible(true);
                    try {
                        Object fieldVal = savedInstanceState.get(key);
                        if (fieldVal != null) {
                            field.set(classInstance, fieldVal);
                        }
                    } catch (Throwable t) {
                        Log.d(TAG, "The field '" + key + "' was not retrieved from the bundle");
                    }
                }
            }
            clazz = clazz.getSuperclass();
        }
    }

}

---

Example usage:

public class MainActivity extends Activity {

    @SaveInstance
    private String foo;

    @SaveInstance
    private int bar;

    @SaveInstance
    private Intent baz;

    @SaveInstance
    private boolean qux;

    @Override
    public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        Icicle.load(savedInstanceState, this);
    }

    @Override
    public void onSaveInstanceState(Bundle outState) {
        super.onSaveInstanceState(outState);
        Icicle.save(outState, this);
    }

}

---

Note: This code was adapted from a library project named AndroidAutowire which is licensed under the MIT license.

Answer 3

Simple quick to solve this problem is using IcePick

First, setup the library in app/build.gradle

repositories {
  maven {url "https://clojars.org/repo/"}
}
dependencies {
  compile 'frankiesardo:icepick:3.2.0'
  provided 'frankiesardo:icepick-processor:3.2.0'
}

Now, let's check this example below how to save state in Activity

public class ExampleActivity extends Activity {
  @State String username; // This will be automatically saved and restored

  @Override public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
    Icepick.restoreInstanceState(this, savedInstanceState);
  }

  @Override public void onSaveInstanceState(Bundle outState) {
    super.onSaveInstanceState(outState);
    Icepick.saveInstanceState(this, outState);
  }
}

It works for Activities, Fragments or any object that needs to serialize its state on a Bundle (e.g. mortar's ViewPresenters)

Icepick can also generate the instance state code for custom Views:

class CustomView extends View {
  @State int selectedPosition; // This will be automatically saved and restored

  @Override public Parcelable onSaveInstanceState() {
    return Icepick.saveInstanceState(this, super.onSaveInstanceState());
  }

  @Override public void onRestoreInstanceState(Parcelable state) {
    super.onRestoreInstanceState(Icepick.restoreInstanceState(this, state));
  }

  // You can put the calls to Icepick into a BaseCustomView and inherit from it
  // All Views extending this CustomView automatically have state saved/restored
}

Answer 4

You need to override onSaveInstanceState(Bundle savedInstanceState) and write the application state values you want to change to the Bundle parameter like this:

@Override
public void onSaveInstanceState(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
  super.onSaveInstanceState(savedInstanceState);
  // Save UI state changes to the savedInstanceState.
  // This bundle will be passed to onCreate if the process is
  // killed and restarted.
  savedInstanceState.putBoolean("MyBoolean", true);
  savedInstanceState.putDouble("myDouble", 1.9);
  savedInstanceState.putInt("MyInt", 1);
  savedInstanceState.putString("MyString", "Welcome back to Android");
  // etc.
}

The Bundle is essentially a way of storing a NVP ("Name-Value Pair") map, and it will get passed in to onCreate() and also onRestoreInstanceState() where you would then extract the values from activity like this:

@Override
public void onRestoreInstanceState(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
  super.onRestoreInstanceState(savedInstanceState);
  // Restore UI state from the savedInstanceState.
  // This bundle has also been passed to onCreate.
  boolean myBoolean = savedInstanceState.getBoolean("MyBoolean");
  double myDouble = savedInstanceState.getDouble("myDouble");
  int myInt = savedInstanceState.getInt("MyInt");
  String myString = savedInstanceState.getString("MyString");
}

Or from a fragment.

@Override
public void onViewStateRestored(@Nullable Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    super.onViewStateRestored(savedInstanceState);
    // Restore UI state from the savedInstanceState.
    // This bundle has also been passed to onCreate.
    boolean myBoolean = savedInstanceState.getBoolean("MyBoolean");
    double myDouble = savedInstanceState.getDouble("myDouble");
    int myInt = savedInstanceState.getInt("MyInt");
    String myString = savedInstanceState.getString("MyString");
}

You would usually use this technique to store instance values for your application (selections, unsaved text, etc.).

Answer 5

Although the accepted answer is correct, there is a faster and easier method to save the Activity state on Android using a library called Icepick. Icepick is an annotation processor that takes care of all the boilerplate code used in saving and restoring state for you.

Doing something like this with Icepick:

class MainActivity extends Activity {
  @State String username; // These will be automatically saved and restored
  @State String password;
  @State int age;

  @Override public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
    Icepick.restoreInstanceState(this, savedInstanceState);
  }

  @Override public void onSaveInstanceState(Bundle outState) {
    super.onSaveInstanceState(outState);
    Icepick.saveInstanceState(this, outState);
  }
}

Is the same as doing this:

class MainActivity extends Activity {
  String username;
  String password;
  int age;

  @Override
  public void onSaveInstanceState(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    super.onSaveInstanceState(savedInstanceState);
    savedInstanceState.putString("MyString", username);
    savedInstanceState.putString("MyPassword", password);
    savedInstanceState.putInt("MyAge", age); 
    /* remember you would need to actually initialize these variables before putting it in the
    Bundle */
  }

  @Override
  public void onRestoreInstanceState(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    super.onRestoreInstanceState(savedInstanceState);
    username = savedInstanceState.getString("MyString");
    password = savedInstanceState.getString("MyPassword");
    age = savedInstanceState.getInt("MyAge");
  }
}

Icepick will work with any object that saves its state with a Bundle.

Answer 6

Not sure if my solution is frowned upon or not, but I use a bound service to persist ViewModel state. Whether you store it in memory in the service or persist and retrieve it from a SQLite database depends on your requirements. This is what services of any flavor do, they provide services such as maintaining application state and abstract common business logic.

Because of memory and processing constraints inherent on mobile devices, I treat Android views in a similar way to a web page. The page does not maintain state, it is purely a presentation layer component whose only purpose is to present application state and accept user input. Recent trends in web app architecture employ the use of the age-old Model, View, Controller (MVC) pattern, where the page is the View, domain data is the model, and the controller sits behind a web service. The same pattern can be employed in Android with the View being, well ... the View, the model is your domain data, and the Controller is implemented as an Android bound service. Whenever you want a view to interact with the controller, bind to it on start/resume and unbind on stop/pause.

This approach gives you the added bonus of enforcing the Separation of Concern design principle in that all of you application business logic can be moved into your service which reduces duplicated logic across multiple views and allows the view to enforce another important design principle, Single Responsibility.