What is android content context

Context

Context – это объект, который предоставляет доступ к базовым функциям приложения: доступ к ресурсам, к файловой системе, вызов активности и т.д. Activity является подклассом Context, поэтому в коде мы можем использовать её как ИмяАктивности.this (напр. MainActivity.this), или укороченную запись this. Классы Service, Application и др. также работают с контекстом.

Доступ к контексту можно получить разными способами. Существуют такие методы как getApplicationContext(), getContext(), getBaseContext() или this, который упоминался выше, если используется в активности.

На первых порах не обязательно понимать, зачем он нужен. Достаточно помнить о методах, которые позволяют получить контекст и использовать их в случае необходимости, когда какой-нибудь метод или конструктор будет требовать объект Context в своих параметрах.

В свою очередь Context имеет свои методы, позволяющие получать доступ к ресурсам и другим объектам.

• getAssets()
• getResources()
• getPackageManager()
• getString()
• getSharedPrefsFile()

Возьмём к примеру метод getAssets(). Ваше приложение может иметь ресурсы в папке assets вашего проекта. Чтобы получить доступ к данным ресурсам, приложение использует механизм контекста, который и отвечает доступность ресурсов для тех, кто запрашивает доступ — активность, служба и т.д. Аналогично происходит с методом getResources. Например, чтобы получить доступ к ресурсу цвета используется конструкция getResources().getColor(), которая может получить доступ к данным из файла res/colors.xml.

Таким образом, создавая, например, вторую активность, мы можем сразу обеспечить ей доступ к своим ресурсам, так как активность относится к контексту. При создании собственных компонентов View также используется контекст в конструкторах, так как компонент тоже может использовать ваши ресурсы. При создании собственных классов, если вам нужно будет обращаться к контексту, то необходимо создать конструктор:

Через контекст можно узнать практически всю информацию о вашем приложении — имя пакета, класса и т.п.

Тем не менее, следует различать контекст в разных ситуациях. Допустим, у вас есть приложение с несколькими активностями. В манифесте можно прописать используемую тему как для всего приложения, так и для каждой активности в отдельности. Соответственно, выбор контекста повлияет на результат. Как правило, при использовании собственной темы предпочтительнее использовать контекст активности, а не приложения.

Очень часто начинающие программисты впадают в ступор, когда ключевое слово this не работает в анонимных классах, например, при щелчке кнопки. В этом случае, используйте полное имя класса перед ним.

При создании адаптеров для списков также обращаются к контексту.

Или ещё пример для адаптера в фрагменте ListFragment:

Здесь тоже следует быть внимательным, если используется своя тема для списка.

Последнее замечание относится к опытным программистам. Неправильный контекст может послужить источником утечки памяти. Если вы создадите собственный класс, в котором содержится статическая переменная, обращающая к контексту активности, то система будет держать ссылку на переменную. Если активность будет закрыта, то сборщик мусора не сможет очистить память от переменной и самой неиспользуемой активности. В таких случаях лучше использовать контекст приложения через метод getApplicationContext().

ContextCompat

В библиотеки совместимости появился свой класс для контекста ContextCompat. Он может вам пригодиться, когда студия вдруг подчеркнёт метод в старом проекте и объявит его устаревшим.

Допустим, мы хотим поменять цвет текста на кнопки.

Студия ругается, что нужно использовать новый вариант getColor(int, Theme). Заменим строчку.

Если посмотреть на исходники этого варианта, то увидим, что там тоже идёт вызов нового метода. Поэтому можно сразу использовать правильный вариант, если вы пишете под Marshmallow и выше.

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Context в Android приложении

Что такое Context?

Как следует из названия, это контекст текущего состояния приложения или объекта. Это позволяет вновь созданным объектам понять, что вообще происходит. Обычно его вызывают, чтобы получить информацию о другой части программы.

Кроме того, Context является проводником в систему, он может предоставлять ресурсы, получать доступ к базам данных, преференсам и т.д. Ещё в Android приложениях есть Activity . Это похоже на проводник в среду, в которой выполняется ваше приложение. Объект Activity наследует объект Context . Он позволяет получить доступ к конкретным ресурсам и информации о среде приложения.

Context присутствует практически повсюду в Android приложении и является самой важной его частью, поэтому необходимо понимать, как правильно его использовать.

Неправильное использование Context может легко привести к утечкам памяти в Android приложении.

Существует много разных типов контекста, поэтому давайте разберёмся, что каждый из них представляет из себя, как и когда их правильно использовать.

Контекст приложения

Это singleton-экземпляр (единственный на всё приложение), и к нему можно получить доступ через функцию getApplicationContext() . Этот контекст привязан к жизненному циклу приложения. Контекст приложения может использоваться там, где вам нужен контекст, жизненный цикл которого не связан с текущим контекстом или когда вам нужно передать контекст за пределы Activity .

Например, если вам нужно создать singleton-объект для вашего приложения, и этому объекту нужен какой-нибудь контекст, всегда используйте контекст приложения.

Если вы передадите контекст Activity в этом случае, это приведет к утечке памяти, так как singleton-объект сохранит ссылку на Activity и она не будет уничтожена сборщиком мусора, когда это потребуется.

В случае, когда вам нужно инициализировать какую-либо библиотеку в Activity , всегда передавайте контекст приложения, а не контекст Activity .

Таким образом, getApplicationContext() нужно использовать тогда, когда известно, что вам нужен контекст для чего-то, что может жить дольше, чем любой другой контекст, который есть в вашем распоряжении.

Контекст Activity

Этот контекст доступен в Activity и привязан к её жизненному циклу. Контекст Activity следует использовать, когда вы передаете контекст в рамках Activity или вам нужен контекст, жизненный цикл которого привязан к текущему контексту.

getContext() в ContentProvider

Этот контекст является контекстом приложения и может использоваться аналогично контексту приложения. К нему можно получить доступ через метод getContext() .

Когда нельзя использовать getApplicationContext()?

Правило большого пальца

В большинстве случаев используйте контекст, доступный непосредственно из компонента, в котором вы работаете в данный момент. Вы можете безопасно хранить ссылку на него, если она не выходит за пределы жизненного цикла этого компонента. Как только вам нужно сохранить ссылку на контекст в объекте, который живет за пределами вашей Activity или другого компонента, даже временно, используйте ссылку на контекст приложения.

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What is Context in Android?

Android apps are popular for a long time and it is evolving to a greater level as user’s expectations are that they need to view the data that they want in an easier smoother view. Hence, the android developers must know the important terminologies before developing the app. In Android Programming we generally come across a word context. So what exactly is this context and why is it so important? To answer this question lets first see what the literal meaning of context is:

The circumstances that form the setting for an event, statement, or idea, and in terms of which it can be fully understood

Looking at this definition we come across two things:

• The context tells us about the surrounding information.
• It is very important to understand the environment which we want to understand.

Similarly when we talk about the Android Programming context can be understood as something which gives us the context of the current state of our application. We can break the context and its use into three major points:

• It allows us to access resources.
• It allows us to interact with other Android components by sending messages.
• It gives you information about your app environment.

In the official Android documentation, context is defined as:

Interface to global information about an application environment. This is an abstract class whose implementation is provided by the Android system. It allows access to application-specific resources and classes, as well as up-calls for application-level operations such as launching activities, broadcasting and receiving intents, etc.

Understanding Context by a Real World Example

Let’s a person visit a hotel. He needs breakfast, lunch, and dinner at a suitable time. Except for these things there are also many other things, he wants to do during the time of stay. So how does he get these things? He will ask the room-service person to bring these things for him. Right? So here the room-service person is the context considering you are the single activity and the hotel to be your app, finally , the breakfast, lunch & dinner have to be the resources.

How Does This Work?

1. It is the context of the current/active state of the application.

Usually, the app got multiple screens like display/inquiry/add/delete screens(General requirement of a basic app). So when the user is searching for something, the context is an inquiry screen in this case.

2. It is used to get information about the activity and application.

The inquiry screen’s context specifies that the user is in inquiry activity, and he/she can submit queries related to the app

3. It is used to get access to resources, databases, and shared preferences, etc.

Via Rest services, API calls can be consumed in android apps. Rest Services usually hold database data and provide the output in JSON format to the android app. The context for the respective screen helps to get hold of database data and the shared data across screens

4. Both the Activity and Application classes extend the Context class.

In android, context is the main important concept and the wrong usage of it leads to memory leakage. Activity refers to an individual screen and Application refers to the whole app and both extend the context class.

Types of Context in Android

There are mainly two types of context are available in Android.

1. Application Context and
2. Activity Context

The Overall view of the App hierarchy looks like the following:

It can be seen in the above image that in “Sample Application”, nearest Context is Application Context. In “Activity1” and “Activity2”, both Activity Context (Here it is Activity1 Context for Activity1 and Activity2 Context for Activity2) and Application Context.The nearest Context to both is their Activity Context only.

Application Context

This context is tied to the life cycle of an application. Mainly it is an instance that is a singleton and can be accessed via getApplicationContext() . Some use cases of Application Context are:

• If it is necessary to create a singleton object
• During the necessity of a library in an activity

getApplicationContext():

It is used to return the context which is linked to the Application which holds all activities running inside it. When we call a method or a constructor, we often have to pass a context and often we use “this” to pass the activity context or “getApplicationContext” to pass the application context. This method is generally used for the application level and can be used to refer to all the activities. For example, if we want to access a variable throughout the android app, one has to use it via getApplicationContext() .

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Mastering Android context

Context in Android is one of the most used and abused objects. But most of the articles on the web focus on the definition of what it is. I could not find a good resource which gave me insight and helped me understand the bigger picture. So I tried simplifying things with this article.

Preface

My mission for this article is to help you master Android Context. This is one of the core topics of Android development, and hardly any developers use context completely and in the way it was designed.

I originally published this article as a series of four posts on my website. If you are interested in reading chapter by chapter, feel free to read there.

Getting started

Have you ever encountered this question: What is difference between getContext() , this , getBaseContext() , and getApplicationContext() ? If yes, this article will help clarify most of your confusion.

Note: you should know the basics of Android development, like Activity, Fragments, Broadcast Receiver, and other building blocks. If you are a new developer who is just starting your journey into the Android world, this might not be the best place to begin.

What the heck is context?

Let’s face it, Context is one of the most poorly designed features of the Android API. You could call it the “God” object.

An Android app or application package kit (APK) is a bundle of components. These components are defined in the Manifest, and consist mainly of Activity (UI), Service (Background), BroadcastReceiver (Action), ContentProvider (Data), and Resources (images, strings etc).

The developer can choose to expose those components to a system using an intent-filter. For example: send email or share picture. They can also choose to expose the components only to other components of their app.

Similarly, the Android operating system was also designed to expose components. A few well known are WifiManager, Vibrator, and PackageManager.

Context is the bridge between components. You use it to communicate between components, instantiate components, and access components.

Your own components

We use context to instantiate our components with Activity, Content Provider, BroadcastReceiver, and so on. We use it to access resources and filesystems as well.

Your component and a system component

Context acts as an entry point to the Android system. Some well-used System components are WifiManager, Vibrator, and PackageManager. You can access WifiManager using context.getSystemService(Context.WIFI_SERVICE) .

In this same way, you can use context to access the filesystem dedicated to your app as a user in OS.

Your own component and some other app’s component

Communicating between your own components and other app’s components is almost identical if you use the intent-filter approach. After-all, every components is an equal citizen in Android.

An example of an intent used to send email is below. All components which are offering this intent action will be served to the user who can opt what to use.
Intent emailIntent = new Intent(android.content.Intent.ACTION_SEND);

Summary

Let’s agree that everything in Android is a component. Context is the bridge between components. You use it to communicate between components, instantiate components, and access components. I hope the definition is now clear.

Different types of Context

There are many ways you can get a hold on context ( bad design spotted).

Most of the time we use one of the following when we need context:

I divide context types into two categories: UI Context and Non-UI Context. This distinction will help you understand n-ways a little better.

UI Context

In reality, only the ContextThemeWrapper is UI Context — which means Context + Your theme.

Activity extends ContextThemeWrapper . This is the reason that, when you inflate any XML, your views are themed. If you inflate your layout with Non-UI context, your layout will not be themed. Go ahead, try it.

When you use Activity as a placeholder for Context, you are guaranteed to be using UI Context. If you use the getContext method from Fragment, you are indirectly using Activity (if you attached Fragment via fragmentManager in activity).

But view.getContext() is not guaranteed to be UI Context.

If View was instantiated using Layout Inflater and passed UI Context, you get UI Context back. But if it was instantiated by not passing UI Context, you get the other context back.

Non-UI Context

Anything except UI Context is Non-UI Context. Technically, anything which is not ContextThemeWrapper is Non-UI Context.

Non-UI Context is allowed do almost everything UI-Context can do ( bad design spotted). But as we pointed out above, you lose theming.

Tip: All context types are supposed to be short lived except Application context. This is the one you get from your application class or from using the getApplicationContext() method when you have context access.

Summary

We have simplified it a little bit by putting Context in two buckets. UI Context is Context + Theming, and technically any class which is a subclass of ContextThemeWrapper comes in this bucket. Non-UI Context is all other types of Context.

Where to use what

The question arises: what will go wrong if you use context in the wrong place? Following are a few scenarios:

Scenario 1

Lets say you are inflating a layout and you use Non-UI Context. What may go wrong? You can guess in this case: you will not get a themed layout. Not so bad, hmm? It’s bearable.

Scenario 2

You pass UI-Context to someplace where all it needs is resource access or file system access. What can no wrong? Short Answer: Nothing. Remember, UI-Context = Context + Theme. It will gladly serve as context for you.

Scenario 3

You pass UI-Context to someplace where all it needs is resource access or file system access but it is a long operation in the background. Say downloading a file. Now what can go wrong? Short Answer: Memory leak.

If you are lucky and download completes quickly, the object is released and everything is fine. Sun is shining and birds are chirping. This is one of the most common mistakes developers make. They pass the reference of UI-Context to long living objects, and sometimes it has zero side effect.

However, sometimes Android wants to claim memory for either one of your next component’s requirements or another component’s requirements, and woooshhhh. You run out of memory in your app. Don’t worry, I will explain.

Memory Leak or Crash! That’s it.

Yes this is the worst case scenario when you use context in the wrong place. If you are new to the app development world, let me share some wisdom. Memory leaks are inversely proportional to your experience. Every Android developer has leaked memory. There is no shame in doing so.

Shame is when you repeat the mistake again and leak it the same way. If you leak memory a different way every time, congrats you are growing. I have explained what a Memory leak is with a short story here.

Okay I get it, but what is the relation of Context here?

Say it aloud, “Bad Design Spotted».

Almost everything in Android needs access to Context. Naive developers pass UI Context, because that’s what they have access to very easily. They pass short-living context (usually Activity context) to long living objects and before the memory/money is returned back to system, they hit a crisis. Woooshhh.

The simplest way to deal with this is with Async Task or Broadcast Receiver. But discussing them isn’t in the scope of this article.

Summary

• Do you need to access UI related stuff? Use UI-Context. Inflating Views and showing dialogue are the two use cases I can think of.
• Otherwise, Use Non UI Context.
• Make sure you do not pass short-living context to long-living objects.
• Pass knowledge, help people, plant trees and invite me for a coffee.

Tips and Tricks

What is the difference between this , getApplicationContext() and getBaseContext() ?

This is one question every Android developer have encountered in their lives. I will try to simplify it as much as possible. Let’s take a step back and revisit the basics.

We know there are many factors in mobile devices. For instance, configuration changes all the time, and locale can change explicitly or implicitly.

All of these changes trigger apps to re-create so they can pick the right resources that are the best match to their current configuration. Portrait, Landscape, Tablet, Chinese, German, and so on. Your app needs the best possible resources to deliver the best user experience. It is the Context which is responsible for delivering those best match resources.

Try answering this question:
The user’s configuration is currently in portrait and you want to access landscape resources. Or the user locale is en and you want to access uk resources. How will you do it?

Below are some magical methods from Context:

There are many createX methods, but we are mainly interested in createConfigurationContext . Here is how you can use it:

You can get a hold of any type of Context you desire. When you call any method on the new Context you just got, you will get access to resources based on the configuration you had set.

I know it is amazing. You can send me thank you card.

Similarly, you can create a Themed Context and use it to inflate views with the theme you want.

Let’s come back to the tricky question we asked above and discuss Activity Context.

What is the difference between this , getApplicationContext() and getBaseContext() ?

These are the possible ways you can get a hold on Context when you are in the Activity scope.

this points to Activity itself, our UI Context and short life context. getApplicationContext() points to your application instance which is Non-UI and long living context.

baseContext is the base of your Activity Context which you can set using a delegate pattern. You already know you can create Context with any xyz configuration you want. You can combine your xyz configuration knowledge with Base Context and your Activity will load resources as you desire.

Here is the method you can use:

Once BaseContext is attached, your Activity will delegate calls to this object. If you do not attach to Activity, it remains baseContext and you get Activity when you call getBaseContext .

Conclusion

We can say Context is the life of your android app. From Android’s point of view, it is your app. You can do almost nothing without Context. Without it, your app is plain Java code.

Context + Java code => Android

Good or bad, it is the design we have and we have to make the best of it. From the first part of this article, we learned that we use it to communicate between components, instantiate components, and access components.

In the next part, we learned that Context can be UI or NonUI, Short Lived or Long lived.

Following that, we learned that you need to choose context carefully otherwise you have to deal with memory leaks and other UI issues.

Finally, you saw that Context is responsible for loading best match resources for your app and you can configure it as you want. We also learned the difference between this , applicationContext and baseContext .

Many developers will advise you to use only application context. Do not use Application Context everywhere from the fear of a memory leak. Understand the root cause and always use the right Context in the right place.

You, my dear friend, are a master of Android Context now. You can suggest the next topic you want to understand. Click here to suggest.

Below are links from the original Series Mastering Android Context on my blog.

Chapter 1

What the heck is Context? Why do we need it and what are various use cases in day to day development?

Chapter 2

Simplifying Context. We will discuss how many types of context are there and which ones are you suppose to use.

Chapter 3

Where to use UI Context and where to use Non UI-Context. How using context at wrong place may lead to memory leaks.

Chapter 4

My UI Context also offers me multiple types of context. Let’s answer this question and see how to avoid common pitfalls.

Training

Do you know that many times your app is crashing because your developers are not using Context properly? Let’s learn together. I offer training in Android, Java, and Git.

Want to master Android themes? Check out our series with more than 3k upvotes.

Feel free to share your feedback and questions. Happy Coding.

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