Get instance initialized with the new App Startup API

Question

I saw this new API in the Android dev guide,and I wanted to try it out since it looked like a really nice way to initialize components. But looking over the articles and the examples, it makes no sense to me how am I suppose to use this API. I get the first example, in order to use the WorkManager you would first need to call its initialize method, so this new API can handle that for you. But the create method of the Initializer returns an instance of whatever you are trying to initialize. This means that that instance is somewhere available for you to grab. But there is no explanation on how to retrieve that instance later in your code to use it.

So my question is if there was anyone who got around to test this new API, if you could give me an example of how you use the instance that the App Startup API initialized for you. Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

As of now, the library leaves this up to the developer. The point is mainly to add a unified way for libraries to automatically initialize themselves without boilerplate code. If you are the author of a library using this approach, you are still obligated to provide a way of obtaining these objects.

Edit

I went with the assumption that AppInitializer.getInstance(context).initializeComponent(...) is only used for creating new instances. However, after having a look at the source code, it turns out instances are cached and immediately returned here if they have been inititialized earlier. But on the down side, you will need to pass a Context object.

I would also advice to only call it from the main thread, since there is no singleton-style locking in place