Activity restart on rotation Android

Question

In my Android application, when I rotate the device (slide out the keyboard) then my Activity is restarted (onCreate is called). Now, this is proba

Answer 1

There are several ways to do this:

Save Activity State

You can save the activity state in onSaveInstanceState.

@Override
public void onSaveInstanceState(Bundle outState) {
    /*Save your data to be restored here
    Example : outState.putLong("time_state", time); , time is a long variable*/
    super.onSaveInstanceState(outState);
}

and then use the bundle to restore the state.

@Override
protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);

    if(savedInstanceState!= null){
       /*When rotation occurs
        Example : time = savedInstanceState.getLong("time_state", 0); */
    } else {
      //When onCreate is called for the first time
    }
}

Handle orientation changes by yourself

Another alternative is to handle the orientation changes by yourself. But this is not considered a good practice.

Add this to your manifest file.

android:configChanges="keyboardHidden|orientation"

for Android 3.2 and later:

android:configChanges="keyboardHidden|orientation|screenSize"

@Override
public void onConfigurationChanged(Configuration config) {
    super.onConfigurationChanged(config);

if (newConfig.orientation == Configuration.ORIENTATION_PORTRAIT) {
        //Handle rotation from landscape to portarit mode here
    } else if (newConfig.orientation == Configuration.ORIENTATION_LANDSCAPE){
        //Handle rotation from portrait to landscape mode here
    }
}

Restrict rotation

You can also confine your activity to portrait or landscape mode to avoid rotation.

Add this to the activity tag in your manifest file:

        android:screenOrientation="portrait"

Or implement this programmatically in your activity:

@Override
    protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        setRequestedOrientation(ActivityInfo.SCREEN_ORIENTATION_PORTRAIT);
}