This is worth reading!
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Brian Nicholson <bnichol...@mozilla.com> Date: Wed, Feb 12, 2014 at 11:38 AM Subject: Activity Context vs Application Context To: mobile-firefox-...@mozilla.org A worthy read: http://www.doubleencore.com/2013/06/context/ When using Contexts, there are several different context types (Application, Activity, Service, etc. -- all mentioned in the link above). In the front-end code, the Application Context and Activity Context are the easiest to misuse. If you're doing anything UI-related, you *must* use the Activity Context. For example, this line showing a Toast looks innocuous enough: http://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/file/879038dcacb7/mobile/android/base/home/HomeFragment.java#l157. But when you look at the Context being used, it's actually the Application Context. Red flag! On the other hand, when storing Context for long-lived objects (especially singletons), make sure you don't hold onto the Activity Context since that can result in memory leaks (An Activity can be recreated in the same Application instance). Better options are either a) pass the Activity Context to any methods requiring one, or b) if only the Application Context is needed, store the Application Context instead (e.g., http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/mobile/android/base/Tab.java#89). But be careful not to use this Context for anything UI-related for the reasons above. In short, all Contexts are not created equal, so we need to be careful how we use them. Brian _______________________________________________ mobile-firefox-dev mailing list mobile-firefox-...@mozilla.org https://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/mobile-firefox-dev
