Question

I’ve been experimenting with extending Application as a quick way of getting hold of the Application Context object. I have a class like so:

public class PageMonitorApplication extends Application
{
    @Override
    public Context getApplicationContext()
    {
        return super.getApplicationContext();
    }
}

And my manifest includes:

<application android:icon="@drawable/icon" android:label="@string/app_name" android:name=".PageMonitorApplication">

However, when creating an instance of PageMonitorActivity and calling getApplicationContext() I get a null pointer exception. Whilst debugging in eclipse and inspecting the instance of PageMonitorActivity, I can see that base=null.

Can anyone advise what is wrong?

Answer 1

super.getApplicationContext() is returning null because PageMonitorApplication is the application context. You should check if getApplicationContext returns null, and if so, just use the Context you already have.

To get a reference to PageMonitorApplication, call getApplicationContext on the current Activity or Service (or other Context you may have).