To use LoaderManager for detail view or not?

Question

I'm building a (master-detail) view that has 2 fragments: a ListFragment and a more detailed Fragment view. Clicking on any item in the list reveals a Detail View. For the ListFragment, I'm using a LoaderManager with a CursorLoader, to manage my queries (I've been following the excellent guidelines in Alex Lockwood's posts on the subject).

When it comes to revealing the "detail" view (by clicking on the list view), I need to query the same content provider, and get a single row of information. I'm unsure as to how best to handle this.

Since I'm essentially getting back a single row, and can free the cursor right away:

• Should I just use a straight getContentResolver().query() and work with a cursor directly?
• Use another LoaderManager to manage the cursor and results?

Answer 1

Use the LoaderManager.

The same reason you are creating the Loader in your List view is the same reason you should create it in the Details View. Any heavy operations should be placed on a background thread to prevent UI unresponsiveness. Database interactions are no exception to that rule. It may seem like your data loads instantly but in reality you're doing some heavy work directly on the UI thread which can give unwanted performance in your UI

Project butter, yo

Plus, you get the added benefits of the LoaderManager retaining your results. So, when you rotate and reload the data it is loading a cached result instead of you having to retain all of the data yourself.