Question

I’ve got a class which contains a getter and setter for the variable “artist”:

Class:

public void setArtist(String artist) {
    this.artist = artist;
}

public String getArtist() {
    return artist;
}

I’d like to call setArtist from an activity like so:

Activity 1:

Playlist.setArtist(someString)

But eclipse tells me I need to change setArtist to static. The whole point of me using setters was to avoid having any static references. Am I doing something wrong, or is there another way to accomplish this?

Answer 1

It entirely depends on where and when you want your object. You could do something like this:

class Artist implements Serializable{
  public static final String EXTRA = "com.your.package.ARTIST_EXTRA";

  private String name;

  public void setName(String name) {
      this.name = name;
  }

  public String getName() {
      return name;
  }    
}

Activity 1:

public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstance){
    // ....
    Artist artist = new Artist();
    artist.setName("Rolf");        

    Intent intent = new Intent(this, SecondActivity.class);
    intent.putExtra(Artist.EXTRA, artist);
    startActivity(intent);
}

Activity 2:

You then have a reference to your Artist in the second Activity:

public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstance){
   // ....
   Artist artist = (Artist) getIntent().getSerializableExtra(Artist.EXTRA);

   Log.d("YourApp", "I have the artist! "+ artist.getName());

} 

Watch what you are serialising as you cannot serialize certain objects.

Another way to go it would be to have a class that extends Application and keep a reference in there, then you could retrieve it from any Activity context.