Question

I’m creating new option menu inside fragment but after reading
http://developer.android.com/resources/articles/avoiding-memory-leaks.html
which said to it’s better to use context-application than context-activity, I’m afraid to use getActivity().getMenuInflater()

So, actually which one better

@Override
public void onCreateOptionsMenu(Menu menu, MenuInflater inflater) {
    MenuInflater mInflater = new MenuInflater(getActivity().getApplicationContext());
    mInflater.inflate(R.menu.simple_menu, menu);
}

Or the one call activity

@Override
public void onCreateOptionsMenu(Menu menu, MenuInflater inflater) {
    MenuInflater mInflater = getActivity().getMenuInflater();
    mInflater.inflate(R.menu.simple_menu, menu);

}

and, what’s the differences between the two of ’em? or..both are just the same?

Thanks.

Answer 1

They are very similar. Looking through the MenuInflator’s source, the only thing it uses the context for is to access the resource files. So the specific context doesn’t matter to the MenuInflator.

As for memory leaks, the article you reference says

The most obvious [way to avoid memory leaks] is to avoid escaping the
context outside of its own scope

Unless you pass the MenuInflator (or Menu) to another class then it is contained in the activity and won’t be leaked.

EDIT

In addition Activity.getMenuInflator() is just a convenience method for new MenuInflator(). In fact this is the method inside the Activity class:

public MenuInflater getMenuInflater() {
    return new MenuInflater(this);
}

It is usually better to use convenience methods since they allow for the underlying implementation to change in future versions without you having to change your code. For example if the above method is modified to return a cached instance instead of creating a new one each time.