Android: It is a good practice to get Context statically? [duplicate]

Answer 1

Yes, this is fine. Having a static reference to the Application's Context will not cause any memory leak. This Context exists as long as the process is alive.

Answer 2

If you need to do this then I think you need to rethink your design. You shouldn't need Context (that I can think of) outside of an Activity, Fragment, Service, etc. Everything should stem from the basic application components and you should be able to appropriately pass down the Context without needing to do this. For example, you can call getContext() from Views to grab it. If you need to use it in a POJO then it should be somewhat tied to an application component and have it passed in through the constructor.

edit: Seems like you might be fine with the memory leak issue? I remember reading about screen orientation changes wrecking havoc when someone did this. In any case, it doesn't make much sense from a design point of view to me.

edit2: You guys are right. I was incorrectly remembering Romain's blog article about it.

Answer 3

It's there any difference between use the context stored on this class and use and activity as context?

Yes. Please read Dave Smith's epic blog post on the subject. In summary: only use an Application when you know why Application is the right answer... and it rarely is.

It is a good practice to have this class

IMHO, not usually. You may sometimes need an Application object, but you do not need your own custom subclass, and you do not need to make it a singleton.

should I provide an activity as context to any class who needs it?

You supply the right Context instance to any method that needs it. As Dave Smith describes in that blog post, not all Context instances are created equal. Only use Application when Application is the right sort of Context.