How to stop and restart an activity in an android instrumentation test?

Question

I\'m trying to write an Android activity instrumentation test that stops (onPause(), then onStop()) and restarts the current activity. I tried

Answer 1

By calling (or trigger a screen orientation change):

activity.finish(); // old activity instance is destroyed and shut down.
activity = getActivity(); // new activity instance is launched and created.

Causing the activity go through the complete recreation life cycle:

onPause() -> onStop() -> onDestroy() -> onCreate()

What you need is:

onPause() -> onStop() -> onRestart()

I exposed the Instrumentation API recently and found plenty of interesting activity life cycle trigger method callActivityOnXXX(), the following single line of code should do the tricky:

MyActivity myActivity = getActivity();
// make activity falling into restart phase:
getInstrumentation().callActivityOnRestart(myActivity);

Activity life cycle diagram quoting from official dev guide: