Android Activity, lifecycle, methods and states

Activity :

An activity is a single, focused thing that the user can do. Almost all activities interact with the user, so the Activity class takes care of creating a window for you in which you can place your UI with setContentView(View). While activities are often presented to the user as full-screen windows, they can also be used in other ways: as floating windows (via a theme with windowIsFloating set) or embedded inside of another activity (using ActivityGroup). Android activity is the subclass of ContextThemeWrapper class.

There are two methods almost all subclasses of Activity will implement:

·         onCreate(Bundle) is where you initialize your activity. Most importantly, here you will usually call setContentView(int) with a layout resource defining your UI, and using findViewById(int) to retrieve the widgets in that UI that you need to interact with programmatically.

·         onPause() is where you deal with the user leaving your activity. Most importantly, any changes made by the user should at this point be committed (usually to the ContentProvider holding the data).

Activity Lifecycle :

Activities in the system are managed as an activity stack. When a new activity is started, it is placed on the top of the stack and becomes the running activity -- the previous activity always remains below it in the stack, and will not come to the foreground again until the new activity exits.

An activity has essentially four states:

·         If an activity is in the foreground of the screen (at the top of the stack), it is active or running.

·         If an activity has lost focus but is still visible (that is, a new non-full-sized or transparent activity has focus on top of your activity), it is paused. A paused activity is completely alive (it maintains all state and member information and remains attached to the window manager), but can be killed by the system in extreme low memory situations.

·         If an activity is completely obscured by another activity, it is stopped. It still retains all state and member information, however, it is no longer visible to the user so its window is hidden and it will often be killed by the system when memory is needed elsewhere.

·         If an activity is paused or stopped, the system can drop the activity from memory by either asking it to finish, or simply killing its process. When it is displayed again to the user, it must be completely restarted and restored to its previous state.

The following diagram shows the important state paths of an Activity. The square rectangles represent callback methods you can implement to perform operations when the Activity moves between states. The colored ovals are major states the Activity can be in.

Activity Methods :

onCreate():

Called when the activity is first created. This is where you should do all of your normal static set up:  create views, bind data to lists, etc. This method also provides you with a Bundle containing the activity’s previously frozen state, if there was one. Always followed by onStart().

onRestart():

Called after your activity has been stopped, prior to it being started again. Always followed by onStart().

onStart():

Called when the activity is becoming visible to the user. Followed by onResume(). If the activity comes to the foreground or onStop() if it becomes hidden.

onResume():

Called when the activity will start interacting with the user. At this point your activity is at the top of the activity stack, with user input going to it. Always followed by onPause().

onPause ():

Called as part of the activity lifecycle when an activity is going into the background, but has not been killed. The counterpart to onResume(). When activity B is launched in front of activity A, this callback will be invoked on A. B will not be created until A’s onPause() returns, so be sure to not do anything lengthy here.

onStop():

Called when you are no longer visible to the user. You will next receive either onRestart(), onDestory(), or nothing, depending on later user activity.

Note: This method may not be called, in low memory situations where the syatem does not have enough memory to keep your activity’s process running after its onPause() called.

onDestroy():

The final call you receive before your activity is destroyed. This can happen either because the activity is finishing (Called finish() method), or because the system is temporarily destroying this instance of the activity to save space. You can distinguish between these two scenarios with the isFinishing() method.

When the Activity first time loads the events are called as below:

onCreate()

onStart()

onResume()

When you click on Phone button the Activity goes to the background and the below events are called:

onPause()

onStop()

Exit the phone dialer and the below events will be called:

onRestart()

onStart()

onResume()

When you click the back button OR try to finish() the activity the events are called as below:

onPause()

onStop()

onDestroy()

Activity States

The Android OS uses a priority queue to assist in managing activities running on the device. Based on the state a particular Android activity is in, it will be assigned a certain priority within the OS. This priority system helps Android identify activities that are no longer in use, allowing the OS to reclaim memory and resources. The following diagram illustrates the states an activity can go through, during its lifetime:

These states can be broken into three main groups as follows:

Active or Running - Activities are considered active or running if they are in the foreground, also known as the top of the activity stack. This is considered the highest priority activity in the Android Activity stack, and as such will only be killed by the OS in extreme situations, such as if the activity tries to use more memory than is available on the device as this could cause the UI to become unresponsive.

Paused - When the device goes to sleep, or an activity is still visible but partially hidden by a new, non-full-sized or transparent activity, the activity is considered paused. Paused activities are still alive, that is, they maintain all state and member information, and remain attached to the window manager. This is considered to be the second highest priority activity in the Android Activity stack and, as such, will only be killed by the OS if killing this activity will satisfy the resource requirements needed to keep the Active/Running Activity stable and responsive.

Stopped - Activities that are completely obscured by another activity are considered stopped or in the background. Stopped activities still try to retain their state and member information for as long as possible, but stopped activities are considered to be the lowest priority of the three states and, as such, the OS will kill activities in this state first to satisfy the resource requirements of higher priority activities.

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