Question

I am using Twitter4J to post to Twitter but you have to open up the browser and get a pin from Twitter for my app to be able to do this and that works but when I return to my app, the activity times out and closes itself. Is there a way to keep my activity open? The webview does not work as Twitter doesn’t let you authorize with a regular path.

public void TwitterSend () {
    // The factory instance is re-useable and thread safe.
    Twitter twitter = new TwitterFactory().getInstance();
    twitter.setOAuthConsumer(consumer_token, consumer_secret);

    //WebView webview = (WebView) findViewById(R.id.webview);
    //webview.setVisibility(View.VISIBLE);
    //ScrollView sc = (ScrollView) findViewById(R.id.scrollView1);
    //sc.setVisibility(View.VISIBLE);
    EditText edit = (EditText) findViewById(R.id.editText1);
    edit.setVisibility(View.VISIBLE);
    RequestToken requestToken = null;
    try {
        requestToken = twitter.getOAuthRequestToken();
        System.out.println(requestToken.toString());
    } catch (TwitterException e) {
        // TODO Auto-generated catch block
        e.printStackTrace();
    }
    AccessToken accessToken = null;

    //webview.loadUrl("https://api.twitter.com/oauth/authorize");
    Intent browserIntent = new Intent("android.intent.action.VIEW", Uri.parse(requestToken.getAuthorizationURL()));
    browserIntent.setFlags(Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK);
    startActivity(browserIntent);


      System.out.println("Open the following URL and grant access to your account:");

      System.out.print("Enter the PIN(if aviailable) or just hit enter.[PIN]:");
      String pin = edit.getText().toString();
    CountDownTimer timer = new CountDownTimer(900000, 1000) {

        public void onTick(long millisUntilFinished) {
        }


        public void onFinish() {

        }
     };
     timer.start();
      while(pin.length()<7)
      {
          pin = edit.getText().toString();
      }
      System.out.print(pin);
      try{
         if(pin.length() > 0){
           accessToken = twitter.getOAuthAccessToken(requestToken, pin);
         }else{
           accessToken = twitter.getOAuthAccessToken();
         }
      } catch (TwitterException te) {
        if(401 == te.getStatusCode()){
          System.out.println("Unable to get the access token.");
            edit.setVisibility(View.GONE);
        }else{
          te.printStackTrace();
        }
      }

    //persist to the accessToken for future reference.
    Status status = null;
    try {

        SharedPreferences stats = getSharedPreferences(PREFS_NAME, 0);
        String quote = stats.getString("shareQuote", "An error has occured. We are Sorry.");
        status = twitter.updateStatus(quote);
    } catch (TwitterException e) {
        // TODO Auto-generated catch block
        e.printStackTrace();
        //webview.setVisibility(View.GONE);
        //edit.setVisibility(View.GONE);
    }
     Toast.makeText(getApplicationContext(), "Successfully updated the status to [" + status.getText() + "].", Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show();
    System.out.println("Successfully updated the status to [" + status.getText() + "].");
   // webview.setVisibility(View.GONE);
    edit.setVisibility(View.GONE);
    //sc.setVisibility(View.GONE);
    /*WebView webview = (WebView) findViewById(R.id.webview);
    webview.setVisibility(View.VISIBLE);
    Twitter twitter=new TwitterFactory().getInstance();
    twitter.setOAuthConsumer(consumer_token, consumer_secret);
    AccessToken a = new AccessToken(oauth_token, oauth_token_secret);
    twitter.setOAuthAccessToken(a);
    try {
        RequestToken requestToken = twitter.getOAuthRequestToken("https://api.twitter.com/oauth/request_token");
        webview.loadUrl("https://api.twitter.com/oauth/authorize");
    } catch (TwitterException e) {
        // TODO Auto-generated catch block
        e.printStackTrace();
    }*/

}

Answer 1

It’s generally a bad idea in Android to try to force activities to stay open – the best way to deal with activities being destroyed is to make sure that you are handling all of your activities’ lifecycle callbacks properly. This page is helpful: http://developer.android.com/reference/android/app/Activity.html#ActivityLifecycle

If you properly save the state of your activity, you shouldn’t have problems with the system stopping it.