I’ve encountered a weird issue that has gotten me stumped for a few days now. First some background info:
I have an activity that binds to a third party service (given to me as a library). This service sends asynchronous callbacks to the client (my activity) whenever the client requests an action be performed. The service is never started with startService() and stopService() calls; I perform bind when i need the servcie and unbind when I am done. I never have more than one activity bound to the service at any one time.
My issue:
The user starts my activity (lets call it instance A). I bind to the service in onCreate() and issue a request. I receive a callback from the service and set some local variables accordingly. Once i go through what i need to do, i call finish(). onDestroy() gets called and i then perform un bind service. My assumption at this point is that both the Service instance and my activity should not be able to be referenced any more.
Now, after A has finished, the user starts my activty again (lets call this instance B). I again bind in onCreate and issue a request. However when i receive a callback, i notice that the service has issued a callback to my old “ghost” instance A. I am now using all of instance A’s local variables instead of using This new instance B. I even printed out the “this” reference before binding and again after receiving the callback and was able to see that the reference changes from instance B’s to instance A’s. Execution in my activity continues to proceed, but since my local variables are now set incorrectly to their old state at the end of A’s execution, B’s execution fails.
So a few questions:
- How is it possible that A is still being referenced after
onDestroy() and unbind is called? - Is it likely that this issue could be related to the third party
service and not my implementation? (again, I don’t have the
source code to this service, i’m just using it)
Thanks for any insights you all can offer.
-Jason
Turns out it was the the third party service.