Question

I’ve created a few minor apps for Android while learning. Being a PHP developer, it’s a challenge to get used to it.

I’m especially wondering how I could define a couple of “general” functions in a separate class. Eg I have a function that checks if network connection is available, and if not, shows a dialog saying that the user should enable it. Currently, that function exists in several of my activities. Of course that seems strange – I suppose it would be more logical to define it once and include it in the activites where needed.

I tried putting it in a new class, and included that class in the original activity. But that failed since eg getBaseContext() is not accepted anymore.

I’m wondering how to go ahead. What should I be Google-ing for ? What is this mechanism called?

Answer 1

You need to create class with static methods. Like this

public class HelperUtils {
     public static void checkNetworkConnection(Context ctx) {...}
}

Then you can call it from any place like this:

HelperUtils.checkNetworkConnection(this.getContext());

Assuming current class has Context.

You should read books on general OOP concepts where different type of methods are explained.