Handling onNewIntent in Fragment

Question

I am writing an application that uses NFC to read some data stored on it. My application uses Fragments and Fragment don't come with onNewIntent() method. Since, the data I am reading is done with my separate class which handles NFC related operation, the only thing I need to do is update the TextView inside the Fragment. However this implementation can also be used to pass new Intent to the Fragment.

Here is my current implementation which makes use of an interface. I am calling the listener after new Intent is received and NFC related checks succeeds. This is the FragmentActivity which hosts Fragment.

public class Main extends FragmentActivity implements
    ActionBar.OnNavigationListener {

private Bundle myBalanceBundle;
private NFC nfcObj;
private NewBalanceListener newBlanceListener;

@Override
public void onNewIntent(Intent intent) {
    setIntent(intent);
}

@Override
protected void onResume() {
    getNFCState();
    super.onResume();
}

private void getNFCState() {
    //Other NFC related codes
    else if (nfc_state == NFC.NFC_STATE_ENABLED){
        readNFCTag();
    }
}

private void readNFCTag() {
    //Other NFC related codes
    if (getIntent().getAction().equals(NfcAdapter.ACTION_TECH_DISCOVERED)) {
        nfcObj.setTag((Tag) getIntent().getParcelableExtra(
                NfcAdapter.EXTRA_TAG));
        nfcObj.readQuickBalance();

        transitQuickReadFragment(nfcObj.getCurrentBalance());
    }
}

private void transitQuickReadFragment(String balance) {
    // Creates a balance bundle and calls to select MyBalance Fragment if it
    // is not visible. Calls listener is it is already visible.
    if (actionBar.getSelectedNavigationIndex() != 1) {
        if (myBalanceBundle == null)
            myBalanceBundle = new Bundle();

        myBalanceBundle.putString(Keys.BALANCE.toString(), balance);

        actionBar.setSelectedNavigationItem(1);
    } else {
        newBlanceListener.onNewBalanceRead(balance);
    }
}

@Override
public boolean onNavigationItemSelected(int position, long id) {
    // Other fragment related codes
    fragment = new MyBalance();
    fragment.setArguments(myBalanceBundle);
    newBlanceListener = (NewBalanceListener) fragment;
    // Other fragment related codes
}

// Interface callbacks. You can pass new Intent here if your application
// requires it.
public interface NewBalanceListener {
    public void onNewBalanceRead(String newBalance);

}
}

This is MyBalance Fragment which has TextView that needs to be updated whenever NFC is read:

public class MyBalance extends Fragment implements NewBalanceListener {

private TextView mybalance_value;

@Override
public View onCreateView(LayoutInflater inflater, ViewGroup container,
        Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    //Other onCreateView related code

    Bundle bundle = this.getArguments();
    if (bundle != null)
        mybalance_value.setText(bundle.getString(Keys.BALANCE.toString(),
                "0.00"));
    else
        mybalance_value.setText("0.00");

    //Other onCreateView related code
}

@Override
public void onNewBalanceRead(String newBalance) {
    mybalance_value.setText(newBalance);
}
}

This code works perfectly like expected for my application but, I want to know if there is better way to handle new Intent from Fragments?

Answer 1

This is an old question, but let me answer it in case anybody bumps into it.

First of all you have a bug in your code:

You can't register Fragments as listeners inside Activity the way you do it. The reason is that Activity and Fragments can be destroyed by the system and re-created later from saved state (see documentation on Recreating an Activity). When this happens, new instances of both the Activity and the Fragment will be created, but the code that sets the Fragment as a listener will not run, therefore onNewBalanceRead() will never be called. This is very common bug in Android applications.

In order to communicate events from Activity to Fragment I see at least two possible approaches:

Interface based:

There is an officially recommended approach for communication between Fragments. This approach is similar to what you do now in that it uses callback interfaces implemented by either Fragment or Activity, but its drawback is a tight coupling and lots of ugly code.

Event bus based:

The better approach (IMHO) is to make use of event bus - "master component" (Activity in your case) posts "update" events to event bus, whereas "slave component" (Fragment in your case) registers itself to event bus in onStart() (unregisters in onStop()) in order to receive these events. This is a cleaner approach which doesn't add any coupling between communicating components.

All my projects use Green Robot's EventBus, and I can't recommend it highly enough.

Answer 2

There is at least one alternative: From Activity.onNewIntent documentation:

An activity will always be paused before receiving a new intent, so you can count on onResume() being called after this method.

Note that getIntent() still returns the original Intent. You can use setIntent(Intent) to update it to this new Intent.

FragmentActivity.onNewIntent documentation is different but I don't think it contradicts the above statements. I also make the assumption that Fragment.onResume will be called after FragmentActivity.onResume, even though the documentation seems a little fussy to me, though my tests confirm this assumption. Based on this I updated the Intent in the activity like so (examples in Kotlin)

override fun onNewIntent(intent: Intent?) {
    setIntent(intent)
    super.onNewIntent(intent)
}

And in Fragment.onResume I could handle the new intent like so

override fun onResume() {
    super.onResume()
    doStuff(activity.intent)
}

This way the activity don't need to know about what fragments it holds.