Question

I have an application which pulls data from a webserver, putting this data in a listview and then presenting it to the user. There are 4 activities involved, which can be called like this:

A -> B -> C -> D

or

A -> B -> D

Basically all the activities except A are pulling data from the web. Should there be any problems with the connection and there is a timeout coming up I want the activities B, C and D to inform the user and get back to A.

So what I did right now is, I set A to launch mode singleTask. This way I can catch the timeout exception and call a new intent starting A. But what happens to the activities in between? Let’s say I am calling A->B->C->D and then in D the connection times out. Now the app is going back to A, but what about B and C? Does android automatically call onDestroy on these? What happens to the activity stack? Any hints appreciated.

Cheers

Answer 1

When you launch activity A, from activity D, set the intent flag:

FLAG_ACTIVITY_CLEAR_TOP

Using this flag will clear any activities in between A and the activity you are in, bringing A to the front. You also probably don’t need to be using singleTask as a launch mode.