Question

I have been told recently that extending the Application Class in order to use it as a Singleton was a bad practice but without any explanation.
So what are the potentials problem behind the use of this class ? I have seen it used in many projects.

Also, if using the Application Class is a bad idea, what are the alternatives to store application level variables ?

Answer 1

The problem with using a Singleton class, as well as extending the Application class, is that if the application process is killed – which is very likely to happen when the app is left too long in background – the object will lose all your data.

However, using Application class may be a good option in cases when your app is in foreground or does not stay to much in background (although not 100% risk free).

As an alternative, you could save the data into SharedPreferences, or if your object is more complex, save it in a database.

Another option would be to combine both the use of Application, plus SharedPreferences for example. First try to retrieve the variable from Application instance, if the variable is null, then retrieve it from SharedPreferences.