Is it safe to reuse an intent?

Question

The Android docs define an Intent as "a bundle of information containing an abstract description of an operation to perform". This suggests that you should be able to reuse a single Intent object multiple times if needed, but I haven't seen any examples showing this is the case/ is safe to do. Is there any reason to NOT do the following:

private final Intent enableBluetoothIntent = new Intent(BluetoothAdapter.ACTION_REQUEST_DISCOVERABLE);
...
protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
  enabledBluetoothIntent.putExtra(BluetoothAdapter.EXTRA_DISCOVERABLE_DURATION, 0);
  ...
}

and then call startActivityForResult(enableDiscoverableIntent, REQUEST_ENABLE_BT_DISCOVERY) in multiple places in the code? What happens if the same intent is started twice?

Answer 1

It is completely safe when you want to use it to do the exact same thing, since an Intent is no more than a bunch of data and instructions. If you want to use the same Intent object for different purposes (for example you have a bunch of tabs and try to set the tabs reusing the same intent but changing the activity they'll launch) you have to be more careful, and I'd recommend re-creating a new Intent object for each.