Why to extend an Application class?

Question

Why to extend an Application class?

What is in it for me?

Why would you do that?

I read that it can be used to declare global variables, is that all or are there any other applications?

Answer 1

The Application class is a singleton that you can access from any activity or anywhere else you have a Context object.

You also get a little bit of lifecycle.

You could use the Application's onCreate method to instantiate expensive, but frequently used objects like an analytics helper. Then you can access and use those objects everywhere.

Answer 2

Not an answer but an observation: keep in mind that the data in the extended application object should not be tied to an instance of an activity, as it is possible that you have two instances of the same activity running at the same time (one in the foreground and one not being visible).

For example, you start your activity normally through the launcher, then "minimize" it. You then start another app (ie Tasker) which starts another instance of your activitiy, for example in order to create a shortcut, because your app supports android.intent.action.CREATE_SHORTCUT. If the shortcut is then created and this shortcut-creating invocation of the activity modified the data the application object, then the activity running in the background will start to use this modified application object once it is brought back to the foreground.

Answer 3

Introduction:

1. If we consider an apk file in our mobile, it is comprised of multiple useful blocks such as, Activitys, Services and others.
2. These components do not communicate with each other regularly and not forget they have their own life cycle. which indicate that they may be active at one time and inactive the other moment.

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Requirements:

1. Sometimes we may require a scenario where we need to access a variable and its states across the entire Application regardless of the Activity the user is using,
2. An example is that a user might need to access a variable that holds his personnel information (e.g. name) that has to be accessed across the Application,
3. We can use SQLite but creating a Cursor and closing it again and again is not good on performance,
4. We could use Intents to pass the data but it's clumsy and activity itself may not exist at a certain scenario depending on the memory-availability.

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Uses of Application Class:

1. Access to variables across the Application,
2. You can use the Application to start certain things like analytics etc. since the application class is started before Activitys or Servicess are being run,
3. There is an overridden method called onConfigurationChanged() that is triggered when the application configuration is changed (horizontal to vertical & vice-versa),
4. There is also an event called onLowMemory() that is triggered when the Android device is low on memory.

Answer 4

Offhand, I can't think of a real scenario in which extending Application is either preferable to another approach or necessary to accomplish something. If you have an expensive, frequently used object you can initialize it in an IntentService when you detect that the object isn't currently present. Application itself runs on the UI thread, while IntentService runs on its own thread.

I prefer to pass data from Activity to Activity with explicit Intents, or use SharedPreferences. There are also ways to pass data from a Fragment to its parent Activity using interfaces.

Answer 5

Best use of application class. Example: Suppose you need to restart your alarm manager on boot completed.

public class BaseJuiceApplication extends Application implements BootListener {

    public static BaseJuiceApplication instance = null;

    public static Context getInstance() {
        if (null == instance) {
            instance = new BaseJuiceApplication();
        }
        return instance;
    }

    @Override
    public void onCreate() {
        super.onCreate();


    }

    @Override
    public void onBootCompleted(Context context, Intent intent) {
        new PushService().scheduleService(getInstance());
        //startToNotify(context);
    }

Answer 6

Source: https://github.com/codepath/android_guides/wiki/Understanding-the-Android-Application-Class

In many apps, there's no need to work with an application class directly. However, there are a few acceptable uses of a custom application class:

• Specialized tasks that need to run before the creation of your first activity
• Global initialization that needs to be shared across all components (crash reporting, persistence)
• Static methods for easy access to static immutable data such as a shared network client object

You should never store mutable instance data inside the Application object because if you assume that your data will stay there, your application will inevitably crash at some point with a NullPointerException. The application object is not guaranteed to stay in memory forever, it will get killed. Contrary to popular belief, the app won’t be restarted from scratch. Android will create a new Application object and start the activity where the user was before to give the illusion that the application was never killed in the first place.