Define Default Activity (when app starts) programmatically

Question

My application is composed by a few activity.

Activity A is my main menu with some icons. This Activity can launch depending on which icon you press: Activity B,C,D,E or F.

That's fine and really easy, Activity A is the default one.

Now, I made an option in preference that allow users to start their favourite activity.

Some users will in fact prefer to get directly Activity B for instance.

The only way I found a solution was to do this in Activity A This solution is very ugly because Activity A will always launch and close automatically:

public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);

    settings = PreferenceManager
            .getDefaultSharedPreferences(getBaseContext());
    final Intent intent = getIntent();
    String action = intent.getAction();

    if (Intent.ACTION_MAIN.equals(action)) {
        switch (Integer.valueOf(settings.getString("Activitypref", "1"))) {
        case 2:
            Intent i = new Intent(ActivityA.this, ActivityB.class);
            finish();
            startActivity(i);
            break;
        case 3:
            i = new Intent(ActivityA.this, ActivityC.class);
            finish();
            startActivity(i);
            break;
        case 4:
            i = new Intent(ActivityA.this, ActivityD.class);
            finish();
            startActivity(i);
            break;
        case 5:
            i = new Intent(ActivityA.this, ActivityE.class);
            finish();
            startActivity(i);
            break;
        case 6:
            i = new Intent(ActivityA.this, ActivityF.class);
            finish();
            startActivity(i);
            break;
        default:
            break;
        }
    } 

Answer 1

Instead of ActivityA, consider using wrapper activity to be called from launcher. You will eliminate a need for checking for ACTION_MAIN. Also you can store target activity name in preferences and use it to directly start your target activity via different intent signature:

public Intent (String action)

---

 <activity class=".StartActivity" android:label="...">
             <intent-filter>
                 <action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN" />
                 <category android:name="android.intent.category.LAUNCHER" />
             </intent-filter>
 </activity>

 <activity class=".ActivityA" android:label="...">
             <intent-filter>
                 <action android:name="mypackage.ActivityA" />                    
             </intent-filter>
 </activity>

And in StartActivity

public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);

    settings = PreferenceManager
            .getDefaultSharedPreferences(getBaseContext());

    String action = settings.getString("Activitypref","mypackage.ActivityA");
    Intent intent = new Intent(action);
    startActivity(intent);
    ....
}

You may need to fiddle around little bit to get it right.