Android: How to declare global variables?

I am creating an application which requires login. I created the main and the login activity.

In the main activity onCreate method I added the following condition:

public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
    setContentView(R.layout.main);

    ...

    loadSettings();
    if(strSessionString == null)
    {
        login();
    }
    ...
}

The onActivityResult method which is executed when the login form terminates looks like this:

@Override
public void onActivityResult(int requestCode,
           int resultCode,
           Intent data)
{
    super.onActivityResult(requestCode, resultCode, data);
    switch(requestCode)
    {
     case(SHOW_SUBACTICITY_LOGIN):
     {
      if(resultCode == Activity.RESULT_OK)
      {

       strSessionString = data.getStringExtra(Login.SESSIONSTRING);
       connectionAvailable = true;
       strUsername = data.getStringExtra(Login.USERNAME);
      }
     }
    }

The problem is the login form sometimes appears twice (the login() method is called twice) and also when the phone keyboard slides the login form appears again and I guess the problem is the variable strSessionString.

Does anyone know how to set the variable global in order to avoid login form appearing after the user already successfully authenticates?

I wrote this answer back in '09 when Android was relatively new, and there were many not well established areas in Android development. I have added a long addendum at the bottom of this post, addressing some criticism, and detailing a large philosophical disagreement I have with those who encourage the use of Singletons rather than subclassing Application. Read it at your own risk.

ORIGINAL ANSWER:

The more general problem you are encountering is how to save state across several Activities and all parts of your application. A static variable (for instance, a singleton) is a common Java way of achieving this. I have found however, that a more elegant way in Android is to associate your state with the Application context.

As you know, each Activity is also a Context, which is information about its execution environment in the broadest sense. Your application also has a context, and Android guarantees that it will exist as a single instance across your application.

The way to do this is to create your own subclass of android.app.Application, and then specify that class in the application tag in your manifest. Now Android will automatically create an instance of that class and make it available for your entire application. You can access it from any context using theContext.getApplicationContext() method (Activity also provides a methodgetApplication() which has the exact same effect):

class MyApp extends Application {

  private String myState;

  public String getState(){
    return myState;
  }
  public void setState(String s){
    myState = s;
  }
}

class Blah extends Activity {

  @Override
  public void onCreate(Bundle b){
    ...
    MyApp appState = ((MyApp)getApplicationContext());
    String state = appState.getState();
    ...
  }
}

This has essentially the same effect as using a static variable or singleton, but integrates quite well into the existing Android framework. Note that this will not work across processes (should your app be one of the rare ones that has multiple processes).

NOTE 1: Also as anticafe commented, in order to correctly tie your Application override to your application a tag is necessary in the manifest file. Again, see the Android docs for more info. An example:

<application
     android:name="my.application.MyApp" 
     android:icon="..."
     android:label="...">
</application>

NOTE 2: user608578 asks below how this works with managing native object lifecycles. I admit I am not up to speed on using native code with Android in the slightest, and I am not qualified to answer how that would interact with my solution. If someone does have an answer to this, I am willing to credit them and put the information in this post for maximum visibility.

ADDENDUM:

As some people have noted, this is not a solution for persistent state, something I perhaps should have emphasized more in the original answer. I.e. this is not meant to be a solution for saving user or other information that is meant to be persisted across application lifetimes. Thus, I consider most criticism below related to Applications being killed at any time, etc..., moot, as anything that ever needed to be persisted to disk should not be stored through an Application subclass. It is meant to be a solution for storing temporary, easily re-creatable application state (whether a user is logged in for example) and components which are single instance (application network manager for example) (NOT singleton!) in nature.

Dayerman has been kind enough to point out an interesting conversation with Reto Meier and Diane Hackborn in which use of Application subclasses is discouraged in favor of Singleton patterns. Somatik also pointed out something of this nature earlier, although I didn't see it at the time. Because of Reto and Diane's roles in maintaining the Android platform, I cannot in good faith recommend ignoring their advice. What they say, goes, to a certain extent. I do wish to disagree extremely strongly with the opinions, Diane in particular, expressed with regards to preferring Singleton over Application subclasses. In my disagreement I will be making use of concepts best explained in this StackExchange explanation of the Singleton design pattern, so that I do not have to define terms in this answer. I highly encourage skimming the link before continuing. Point by point:

Diane states the following, "There is no reason to subclass from Application. It is no different than making a singleton..." This first claim is incorrect. There are two main reasons for this. 1) The Application class provides a better lifetime guarantee for an application developer; it is guaranteed to have the lifetime of the application. A singleton is not EXPLICITLY tied to the lifetime of the application (although it is effectively). This may be a non-issue for your average application developer, but I would argue this is exactly the type of contract the Android API should be offering, and it provides much more flexibility to the Android system as well, by minimizing the lifetime of associated data. 2) The Application class provides the application developer with a single instance holder for state, which is very different from a Singleton holder of state. For a list of the differences, see the Singleton explanation link above.

Diane continues, "...just likely to be something you regret in the future as you find your Application object becoming this big tangled mess of what should be independent application logic." This is certainly not incorrect, but this is not a reason for choosing Singleton over Application subclass. In fact it is telling to me that none of Diane's arguments provide a single reason that using a Singleton is better than an Application subclass, all she attempts to establish is that using a Singleton is no worse than an Application subclass, which I believe is false.

Diane also comments that using an Application subclass is "just [as] likely to be something you regret in the future as you find your Application object becoming this big tangled mess of what should be independent application logic." As before this is not incorrect, but only further points out that there is no concrete benefit to using a Singleton instead of an Application subclass in this aspect. She continues, "And this leads more naturally to how you should be managing these things -- initializing them on demand." This ignores the fact that there is no reason you cannot initialize on demand using an Application subclass as well. Again there is no difference.

Diane ends with "The framework itself has tons and tons of singletons for all the little shared data it maintains for the app, such as caches of loaded resources, pools of objects, etc. It works great." I am not arguing that using Singletons cannot work fine or are not a legitimate alternative. I am arguing that Singletons do not provide as strong a contract with the Android system as using an Application subclass, and further that using Singletons generally points to extremely inflexible design, which is not easily modified, and leads to many problems down the road. IMHO, the strong contract the Android API offers to developer applications is one of the most appealing and pleasing aspects of programming with Android, and helped lead to early developer adoption which drove the Android platform to the success it has today. Suggesting using Singletons is implicitly moving away from a strong API contract, and in my opinion, weakens the Android framework.

Given that Diane has not explained a single downside to using an Application subclass, and has not proven that using a Singleton is better in any fashion, I cannot agree with any of her points. It may be that she has not fully explained her reasoning, but I cannot see any downside to using an Application subclass which would counter the numerous downsides to Singletons. I do not argue that Singletons cannot work well, but I do argue that they are generally the product of either a bad API or a lazy programmer. I disagree quite strongly with Diane's viewpoint, which I feel is a terrible basis for an API. I leave you with the following list of downsides to Singletons, as stolen from the StackExchange link:

• Inability to use abstract or interface classes;
• Inability to subclass;
• High coupling across the application (difficult to modify);
• Difficult to test (can't fake/mock in unit tests);
• Difficult to parallelize in the case of mutable state (requires extensive locking);

and add my own:

• Unclear and unmanageable lifetime contract unsuited for Android (or most other) development;

Posted in: Android