Do something before onCreate()?

Question

Is there a way to do some stuff before onCreate() of the MainActivity is called?

We want to do some initializing stuff like logging...

Answer 1

Two options;

1 . If your logging is not related to the activity about to start, rather, you'd need 'some' initialisation before the first activity starts then subclass android.app.Application. The onCreate method here is pretty much the first thing to run when your application starts.

For example, in our app this is where we create our DI injector's or decide whether the app needs a database created ("Preparing for first use") type tasks.

This seems like a good fit for application wide logging subsystem initialisation...

2 . Failing that (and if you want to log precisely just before an Activity's onCreate method is called) then this is a classic use-case for Aspects. We use AspectJ for similar reasons alongside database transaction management. Refer to this blog entry on how to weave the code you require in the Android build system.