Question

Since it’s not recommended to keep a strong reference to a Context in a task (the context may get destroyed while the task is still running, but kept in memory by the task), I was wondering if the same applies to Fragments?

Fragments manage their activity reference, and support being retained via setRetainInstance. Can I assume that e.g. creating a non-static inner AsyncTask in a Fragment is safe in terms of not risking to leak $this?

Answer 1

It’s generally bad methodology to keep references between threads, and an AsyncTask is something like a thread.

It’s okay, as long as you make sure that you dereference it when you are done using it.

Otherwise, you could get memory leaks.

In this case, it’s okay because your Fragment is in the context of AsyncTask. When the task is done, it will lose that reference.

If this were being done in a Service, it would be a very bad idea.