Question

I have an activity that i only want to run when the application is ran for the first time.

And never again. It is a facebook login activity. I only want to launch it once when the app is initially opened for the first time.

How do i go about doing this?

Answer 1

What I’ve generally done is add a check for a specific shared preference in the Main Activity : if that shared preference is missing then launch the single-run Activity, otherwise continue with the main activity . When you launch the single run Activity create the shared preference so it gets skipped next time.

EDIT : In my onResume for the default Activity I do this:

    SharedPreferences prefs = PreferenceManager.getDefaultSharedPreferences(getBaseContext());
    boolean previouslyStarted = prefs.getBoolean(getString(R.string.pref_previously_started), false);
    if(!previouslyStarted) {
        SharedPreferences.Editor edit = prefs.edit();
        edit.putBoolean(getString(R.string.pref_previously_started), Boolean.TRUE);
        edit.commit();
        showHelp();
    }

Basically I load the default shared preferences and look for the previously_started boolean preference. If it hasn’t been set I set it and then launch the help file. I use this to automatically show the help the first time the app is installed.