Is this a valid way to store a static link and Activity / Context? Why shouldn’t I do this?

Question

I have an abstract BaseFragmentActivity class that extends to all my actions in my Android app. In this class, I keep a static link to the current activity as sCurrentActivity . In my onStart() I set this as follows:

 public abstract class BaseFragmentActivity extends FragmentActivity { private static BaseFragmentActivity sCurrentActivity; public static BaseFragmentActivity getCurrentActivity(){ return sCurrentActivity; } @Override protected void onStart() { super.onStart(); sCurrentActivity = this; } 

Using this, from anywhere in the code I can get the current activity / context by calling:

BaseFragmentActivity.getCurrentActivity()

So, everything that I read says that I should not put links to actions / contexts. But if this static variable is distributed between all actions, do I really lose context every time I start a new action? I read a Romain Guy post about avoiding memory leaks ( http://android-developers.blogspot.co.uk/2009/01/avoiding-memory-leaks.html ), watched videos with performance characteristics on the Android developer channel, https: / /youtu.be/h7qHsk1nWKI and https://youtu.be/BkbHeFHn8JY ), and I'm reasonably sure this is bad practice. But can anyone help me understand the exact reason why and where this happens, if that happens. I want to make a case to remove this, but I need a stronger argument than "I think this is a context leak."

EDIT: For clarity, this is a code base that I inherited, where everything is very closely connected and disordered, this function is used almost everywhere where you need to look for a context object. Inside the Spells dialog, new intentions are activated, internal array adapters, even (for unknown reasons) inside fragments, to get views inside parent activity! I need to justify the refactoring efforts to our product owner on new features so that they understand.

Answer 1

You infiltrate one instance of activity at most for a certain time. If you add

  @Override protected void onStop() { super.onStop(); sCurrentActivity = null; } 

Then you will not leak out.

But I really did not understand why you need it, what are you trying to achieve?

EDIT: after you explain what you are trying to achieve, it seems to me more rational to extend the application, and keep a static link to it and access it from anywhere, I think this is better for three reasons:

• An instance of the application is saved in any case, as far as I know, as long as your application is running, and sometimes even when it is not working, until the system tries to free it so that it is ready for the next launch of your application.
• I am sure that an Activity object has a lot more memory overhead than an Application object
• When your application object is killed, I'm 99% sure that your sieze process also exists, so a static link will not cause a leak.

Code example:

 public class App extends Application { public static App context; public void onCreate() { super.onCreate(); context = this; } }