Passing a List from one Activity to another

Question

How to pass Collections like ArrayList, etc from one Activity to another as we used to pass Strings, int with help of putExtra method of Intent?

Can anyone please help me as i want to pass a List<String> from one Activity to another?

Answer 1

You can pass an ArrayList<E> the same way, if the E type is Serializable.

You would call the putExtra (String name, Serializable value) of Intent to store, and getSerializableExtra (String name) for retrieval.

Example:

ArrayList<String> myList = new ArrayList<String>();
intent.putExtra("mylist", myList);

In the other Activity:

ArrayList<String> myList = (ArrayList<String>) getIntent().getSerializableExtra("mylist");

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Please note that serialization can cause performance issues: it takes time, and a lot of objects will be allocated (and thus, have to be garbage collected).

Answer 2

First you need to create a Parcelable object class, see the example

public class Student implements Parcelable {

        int id;
        String name;

        public Student(int id, String name) {
            this.id = id;
            this.name = name;

        }

        public int getId() {
            return id;
        }

        public String getName() {
            return name;
        }


        @Override
        public int describeContents() {
            // TODO Auto-generated method stub
            return 0;
        }

        @Override
        public void writeToParcel(Parcel dest, int arg1) {
            // TODO Auto-generated method stub
            dest.writeInt(id);
            dest.writeString(name);
        }

        public Student(Parcel in) {
            id = in.readInt();
            name = in.readString();
        }

        public static final Parcelable.Creator<Student> CREATOR = new Parcelable.Creator<Student>() {
            public Student createFromParcel(Parcel in) {
                return new Student(in);
            }

            public Student[] newArray(int size) {
                return new Student[size];
            }
        };
    }

And the list

ArrayList<Student> arraylist = new ArrayList<Student>();

Code from Calling activity

Intent intent = new Intent(this, SecondActivity.class);
Bundle bundle = new Bundle();
bundle.putParcelableArrayList("mylist", arraylist);
intent.putExtras(bundle);       
this.startActivity(intent);

Code on called activity

protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
    setContentView(R.layout.activity_second);   

    Bundle bundle = getIntent().getExtras();
    ArrayList<Student> arraylist = bundle.getParcelableArrayList("mylist");
}