Question

I’ve got a class that extends a LinearLayout. My class is used in many places throughout my app. Inside my class I create a Handler:

Handler updateHandler = new Handler() {
     public void handleMessage(Message msg) {
         // Update image, other items, etc.
    }
};

This handler is passed into a static method and saved so that whenever certain conditions arise, all the views associated with this handle can be updated accordingly.

The problem is that I believe I am holding onto the reference to the view indefinitely. So let’s say for example I use my custom class in a ExtendedList and the user collapses the group that displayed a view of my class. Technically, it’s no longer in use, yet it’s handler will still get fired anytime the condition comes up.

Is there a better way I could be doing this? Is there a way to know when a view is being destroy/disposed and is no longer in use by the OS?

BTW: I’m targeting SDK version 7.

EDIT

To better clarify, I’ll provide a real-world scenario that would be a good fit with what I’m trying to do. This is a contrived example.

Imagine you’ve got a map of a country. On the map you have an ImageView for each city showing the city’s current weather. When the weather changes, the ImageView needs to change to reflect the new weather condition – be it sunny, raining, snowy, etc.

To apply this to my original question, I would have created a class called WeatherView which extended ImageView. Inside WeatherView I’d have a Handler which is added to some static list somewhere. In a background thread and being triggered by a timer, I consume a web service which provides the weather in the given cities. When the weather changes, I’d go to my static handler list and find out which cities need to update their image and then trigger that “event” to take place.

Now let’s say the user switches states or countries, and the original cities are no longer valid. Their handler still exists in the list, so they will continue to take up memory and resources.

Answer 1

First of all, you should not hold references to contexts/activities/views in static fields, to avoid memory leaks. (see Avoiding Memory leaks)

I don’t know what you want to do exactly, but it should be possible to create one Handler in each Activity and destroy the Handler when the Activity is destroyed. To do that use the Activity lifecycle methods.

If I understand correctly you are updating all views in your whole application (in all activities). Thats most probably not good in terms of performance.

EDIT

Views should only display data. They should never implement business logic, like fetching data.

To solve your example you can store all WeatherViews in a HashTable/ArrayList or whatever, and your Activity polls the weather service regularly. If the weather changed find the view use the HashTable to get the correct WeatherView and update it.

public class WeatherMapActivity extends ListActivity {

class WeatherData{};


@Override
public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);

    setListAdapter(new ArrayAdapter<WeatherData>(this,android.R.layout.simple_list_item_1, android.R.id.text1, new ArrayList<WeatherData>()));
}

class WeatherTask extends AsyncTask<String, Void, HashMap<String, WeatherData>> {

    @Override
    protected HashMap doInBackground(String... cities) {
        HashMap<String, WeatherData> data = new HashMap<String, WeatherMapActivity.WeatherData>();

        for (String city : cities) {
            WeatherData fetchedData = null;

            // fetch weather from server

            data.put(city, fetchedData);
        }
        return data;
    }

    protected void onPostExecute(HashMap<String, WeatherData> fetchedData) {

        ArrayAdapter<WeatherData> adapter = (ArrayAdapter<WeatherData>) getListAdapter();
        // now remove/add/update data in the adapter

        //update the list view 
        adapter.notifyDataSetChanged();
    }
}

}