Question

My code looks like this:

public static synchronized String getPreferenceString(Context context, String key)
    {
        Cursor c = DatabaseHelper.getDatabase(context).query(TABLE_NAME, new String[]{ "Value" }, "Key=?", new String[]{ key }, null, null, null, null);

        if (c.getCount() == 0)
        {
            c.close();
            return "";
        }

        c.moveToFirst();
        String retVal = c.getString(0);
        c.close();

        return retVal;
    }

Basically, I’m getting specific value out of database table. It works great but I want to prettify my code so it maybe looks like this:

public static synchronized String getPreferenceString(Context context, String key)
    {
        Cursor c = DatabaseHelper.getDatabase(context).query(TABLE_NAME, new String[]{ "Value" }, "Key=?", new String[]{ key }, null, null, null, null);

        if (c.getCount() == 0) return "";

        c.moveToFirst();
        return c.getString(0);
    }

Is it ok or I should close those cursors?

Answer 1

    public static synchronized String getPreferenceString(Context context, String key)
    {
        Cursor c = DatabaseHelper.getDatabase(context).query(TABLE_NAME, new String[] { "Value" }, "Key=?",
                new String[] { key }, null, null, null, null);

        if (c == null)
             return "";

        try {    
            return c.moveToFirst() ? c.getString(0) : "";
        } finally {
            c.close();
        }
    }

You should always close your cursor unless it is being managed by the application somehow (Android automagic stuff with Loaders etc.)