Hello (and nice sunday)

Does someone know the difference between the constructor and the onCreate method of an Activity?

Which one is first called?

Hello sommeralex,

no object without a constructor-call. (don't know which constructor of the "Base"-Activity is called by the system.)
Do you need the constructor. onCreate is "a kind of constructor" one should use.

Regards,
plusminus

thx again for you answer!

i know, why constructors exist - but therefore i ask how they are used in android. because, if you take a look at the actitiy-lifecircle picture, there is NO constructor as we use it from the normal java language mentioned..

for example, if i want to start my activity class, lets say the name of it is MyNewObjectClass with a constructor taking a paramter value Object o like


it will never be called if we use it for example this way:



i think it seems that we (the developers) should not use them this way withing activites because - for activites we have onCreate()

hm..

I am not sure if I understand your question correctly but the reason why you should use the startActivity and startSubActivity is so that the activity manager knows who started the activity and where the result should be returned if it is a sub and where it should go when the user press the back button on the following activity. The onCreate exist so that we do not have to create a subclass each time we want to customize the initialization.

Hopefully I am answering your question correctly.

thanks - i agree with you!!! but this is why the use of a normal constructor then is not necessary anymore (for activities) - and this was my questions: the use of constructors for activities..

The constructor is still needed as it is actually being called to create the object within the startActivity() and startSubActivity(). Within the constructor it will call onCreate() for developer like us to do custom initialization. Thus constructor is still needed =). Without the constructor, the onCreate() would never be called and actually there would be no Activity being created.

If i start my NewObjectClass with an Intent - WHERE is the Constructor called, which takes my Object o as a parameter??

OK, I think I am on the same page as you now. The answer is you can't and I think it is designed that way because of the Activity life cycle. When you call another activity there is a chance that your previous Activity will be destroyed before you returned and therefore they would need to call the constructor to create the Activity again when you get back. Another reason is to be generic and thus they only provide you to pass the Class knowing that there would only be one constructor for the Activity. To solve your problem, I think you are left with passing the object with an intermediary storage such as the SharedPreferences.