Activity restart on rotation Android

Question

In my Android application, when I rotate the device (slide out the keyboard) then my Activity is restarted (onCreate is called). Now, this is probably how it's supposed to be, but I do a lot of initial setting up in the onCreate method, so I need either:

1. Put all the initial setting up in another function so it's not all lost on device rotation or
2. Make it so onCreate is not called again and the layout just adjusts or
3. Limit the app to just portrait so that onCreate is not called.

Answer 1

The way I have found to do this is use the onRestoreInstanceState and the onSaveInstanceState events to save something in the Bundle (even if you dont need any variables saved, just put something in there so the Bundle isn't empty). Then, on the onCreate method, check to see if the Bundle is empty, and if it is, then do the initialization, if not, then do it.

Answer 2

Every time when screen is rotated, opened activity is finished and onCreate() is called again.

1 . You can do one thing save the state of activity when screen is rotated so that, You can recover all old stuff when activity's onCreate() is called again. Refer this link

2 . If you want to prevent restarting of the activity just place following lines in your manifest.xml file.

  <activity android:name=".Youractivity"
  android:configChanges="orientation|screenSize"/>

Answer 3

Update for Android 3.2 and higher:

Caution: Beginning with Android 3.2 (API level 13), the "screen size" also changes when the device switches between portrait and landscape orientation. Thus, if you want to prevent runtime restarts due to orientation change when developing for API level 13 or higher (as declared by the minSdkVersion and targetSdkVersion attributes), you must include the "screenSize" value in addition to the "orientation" value. That is, you must declare android:configChanges="orientation|screenSize". However, if your application targets API level 12 or lower, then your activity always handles this configuration change itself (this configuration change does not restart your activity, even when running on an Android 3.2 or higher device).

Answer 4

There are several ways to do this:

Save Activity State

You can save the activity state in onSaveInstanceState.

@Override
public void onSaveInstanceState(Bundle outState) {
    /*Save your data to be restored here
    Example : outState.putLong("time_state", time); , time is a long variable*/
    super.onSaveInstanceState(outState);
}

and then use the bundle to restore the state.

@Override
protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);

    if(savedInstanceState!= null){
       /*When rotation occurs
        Example : time = savedInstanceState.getLong("time_state", 0); */
    } else {
      //When onCreate is called for the first time
    }
}

Handle orientation changes by yourself

Another alternative is to handle the orientation changes by yourself. But this is not considered a good practice.

Add this to your manifest file.

android:configChanges="keyboardHidden|orientation"

for Android 3.2 and later:

android:configChanges="keyboardHidden|orientation|screenSize"

@Override
public void onConfigurationChanged(Configuration config) {
    super.onConfigurationChanged(config);

if (newConfig.orientation == Configuration.ORIENTATION_PORTRAIT) {
        //Handle rotation from landscape to portarit mode here
    } else if (newConfig.orientation == Configuration.ORIENTATION_LANDSCAPE){
        //Handle rotation from portrait to landscape mode here
    }
}

Restrict rotation

You can also confine your activity to portrait or landscape mode to avoid rotation.

Add this to the activity tag in your manifest file:

        android:screenOrientation="portrait"

Or implement this programmatically in your activity:

@Override
    protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        setRequestedOrientation(ActivityInfo.SCREEN_ORIENTATION_PORTRAIT);
}

Answer 5

You may use ViewModel object in your activity.

ViewModel objects are automatically retained during configuration changes so that data they hold is immediately available to the next activity or fragment instance. Read more:

https://developer.android.com/topic/libraries/architecture/viewmodel

Answer 6

you need to use the onSavedInstanceState method to store all the value to its parameter is has that is bundle

@Override
    public void onSaveInstanceState(Bundle outState, PersistableBundle outPersistentState) {
        super.onSaveInstanceState(outState, outPersistentState);
        outPersistentState.putBoolean("key",value);
    }

and use

@Override
    protected void onRestoreInstanceState(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onRestoreInstanceState(savedInstanceState);
        savedInstanceState.getBoolean("key");
    } 

to retrive and set the value to view objects it will handles the screen rotations