Question

In my application, I extend the application class to maintain information relevant to the authenticated user. However, after running through some tests where I disallow background process, open up another application(thus killing mine), and reopen mine, I notice that this state is lost(variables returning to their default value). I realized that the Application class doesn’t have any lifecycle callbacks, besides onCreate, like the Activities do, which I thought the elegant solution would be. So I decided to write this information to a SharedPreference, so that it can be recovered when needed. Is this the correct solution, or is there a more elegant one?

Relevant sample code for reference:

public class ApplicationUser extends Application {

    private static final String PREF_KEY_USER = "prefKeyUser";
    private static final String PREF_KEY_ID = "prefKeyID";
    private static final String PREF_KEY_FIRST_NAME = "prefKeyFirstName";
    private static final String PREF_KEY_LAST_NAME = "prefKeyLastName";
    private static final String PREF_KEY_EMAIL = "prefKeyEmail";

    private User mUser;
    private SharedPreferences mSharedPreferences;


    @Override
    public void onCreate() {
    super.onCreate();
        mSharedPreferences = getSharedPreferences(PREF_KEY_USER,MODE_PRIVATE);
    }

    /**
     * 
     * @return the user
     */
    public User getUser() {
        if (mUser == null) {
            int id = mSharedPreferences.getInt(PREF_KEY_ID, -1);
            String firstName = mSharedPreferences.getString(PREF_KEY_FIRST_NAME, "");
            String lastName = mSharedPreferences.getString(PREF_KEY_LAST_NAME, "");
            String email = mSharedPreferences.getString(PREF_KEY_EMAIL, "");
            mUser = new User(id, firstName, lastName, email);
        }
        return mUser;
    }

    /**
     * sets user, writing to shared preferences as well
     * @param user
     */
    public void setUser(User user) {
        mUser = user;
        Editor e = mSharedPreferences.edit();
        e.putInt(PREF_KEY_ID, user.getID());
        e.putString(PREF_KEY_FIRST_NAME, user.getFirstName());
        e.putString(PREF_KEY_LAST_NAME, user.getLastName());
        e.putString(PREF_KEY_EMAIL, user.getEmail());
        e.commit();
    }
}

Answer 1

It seems like the way I did it was the correct way, so I am just going to add this as the answer. If this is the incorrect procedure, please correct me.