Activity AppCompatActivity FragmentActivity and ActionBarActivity When to Use Which

Question

I m coming from iOS where it s easy and you simply use a UIViewController  However  in Android things seem much more complicated  with certain UIComponents for specific API Levels  I m reading BigNerdRanch for Android  the book is roughly 2 years old  and they suggest I use Activity to host my FragmentActivities  However  I thought Activity was deprecated    So for API Level 22  with a minimum support for API Level 15 or 16   what exactly should I use both to host the components  and for the components themselves  Are there uses for all of these  or should I be using one or two almost exclusively

User · Answer

There is a lot of confusion here  especially if you read outdated sources   The basic one is Activity  which can show Fragments  You can use this combination if you re on Android version   4   However  there is also a support library which encompasses the other classes you mentioned  FragmentActivity  ActionBarActivity and AppCompat  Originally they were used to support fragments on Android versions  lt  4  but actually they re also used to backport functionality from newer versions of Android  material design for example    The latest one is AppCompat  the other 2 are older  The strategy I use is to always use AppCompat  so that the app will be ready in case of backports from future versions of Android

User · Answer

2019  Use AppCompatActivity  At the time of this writing  check the link to confirm it is still true   the Android Documentation recommends using AppCompatActivity if you are using an App Bar    This is the rational given      Beginning with Android 3 0  API level 11   all activities that use   the default theme have an ActionBar as an app bar  However  app bar   features have gradually been added to the native ActionBar over   various Android releases  As a result  the native ActionBar behaves   differently depending on what version of the Android system a device   may be using  By contrast  the most recent features are added to the   support library s version of Toolbar  and they are available on any   device that can use the support library       For this reason  you should use the support library s Toolbar class to   implement your activities  app bars  Using the support library s   toolbar helps ensure that your app will have consistent behavior   across the widest range of devices  For example  the Toolbar widget   provides a material design experience on devices running Android 2 1    API level 7  or later  but the native action bar doesn t support   material design unless the device is running Android 5 0  API level   21  or later    The general directions for adding a ToolBar are   Add the v7 appcompat support library Make all your activities extend AppCompatActivity In the Manifest declare that you want NoActionBar  Add a ToolBar to each activity s xml layout  Get the ToolBar in each activity s onCreate    See the documentation directions for more details  They are quite clear and helpful

User · Answer

Since the name is likely to change in future versions of Android  currently the latest is AppCompatActivity but it will probably change at some point   I believe a good thing to have is a class Activity that extends AppCompatActivity and then all your activities extend from that one  If tomorrow  they change the name to AppCompatActivity2 for instance you will have to change it just in one place

User · Answer

Activity is the base class of all other activities  I don t think it will be deprecated  The relationship among them is   Activity  lt - FragmentActivity  lt - AppCompatActivity  lt - ActionBarActivity    lt -  means inheritance here  The reference said ActionBarActivity is deprecated  use AppCompatActivity instead   So basically  using AppCompatActivity is always the right choice  The differences between them are    Activity is the basic one  Based on Activity  FragmentActivity provides the ability to use Fragment  Based on FragmentActivity  AppCompatActivity provides features to ActionBar

User · Answer

I thought Activity was deprecated   No      So for API Level 22  with a minimum support for API Level 15 or 16   what exactly should I use both to host the components  and for the components themselves  Are there uses for all of these  or should I be using one or two almost exclusively    Activity is the baseline  Every activity inherits from Activity  directly or indirectly   FragmentActivity is for use with the backport of fragments found in the support-v4 and support-v13 libraries  The native implementation of fragments was added in API Level 11  which is lower than your proposed minSdkVersion values  The only reason why you would need to consider FragmentActivity specifically is if you want to use nested fragments  a fragment holding another fragment   as that was not supported in native fragments until API Level 17   AppCompatActivity is from the appcompat-v7 library  Principally  this offers a backport of the action bar  Since the native action bar was added in API Level 11  you do not need AppCompatActivity for that  However  current versions of appcompat-v7 also add a limited backport of the Material Design aesthetic  in terms of the action bar and various widgets  There are pros and cons of using appcompat-v7  well beyond the scope of this specific Stack Overflow answer   ActionBarActivity is the old name of the base activity from appcompat-v7  For various reasons  they wanted to change the name  Unless some third-party library you are using insists upon an ActionBarActivity  you should prefer AppCompatActivity over ActionBarActivity   So  given your minSdkVersion in the 15-16 range    If you want the backported Material Design look  use AppCompatActivity If not  but you want nested fragments  use FragmentActivity If not  use Activity   Just adding from comment as note  AppCompatActivity extends FragmentActivity  so anyone who needs to use features of FragmentActivity can use AppCompatActivity

User · Answer

For a minimum API level of 15  you d want to use AppCompatActivity  So for example  your MainActivity would look like this    public class MainActivity extends AppCompatActivity                         To use the AppCompatActivity  make sure you have the Google Support Library downloaded  you can check this in your Tools -  Android -  SDK manager   Then just include the gradle dependency in your app s gradle build file   compile  com android support appcompat-v7 22 2 0    You can use this AppCompat as your main Activity  which can then be used to launch Fragments or other Activities  this depends on what kind of app you re building     The BigNerdRanch book is a good resource  but yeah  it s outdated  Read it for general information on how Android works  but don t expect the specific classes they use to be up to date

User · Answer

Activity class is the basic class   The original  It supports Fragment management  Since API 11   Is not recommended anymore its pure use because its specializations are far better   ActionBarActivity was in a moment the replacement to the Activity class because it made easy to handle the ActionBar in an app   AppCompatActivity is the new way to go because the ActionBar is not encouraged anymore and you should use Toolbar instead  that s currently the ActionBar replacement   AppCompatActivity inherits from FragmentActivity so if you need to handle Fragments you can  via the Fragment Manager   AppCompatActivity is for ANY API  not only 16   who said that    You can use it by adding compile  com android support appcompat-v7 24 2 0  in your Gradle file  I use it in API 10 and it works perfect

User · Answer

If you talk about Activity  AppcompactActivity  ActionBarActivity etc etc    We need to talk about Base classes which they are extending  First we have to understand the hierarchy of super classes   All the things are started from Context which is super class for all these classes      Context is an abstract class whose implementation is provided by the   Android system  It allows access to application-specific resources and   classes  as well as up-calls for application-level operations such as   launching activities  broadcasting and receiving intents  etc   Context is followed by or extended by ContextWrapper     The ContextWrapper is a class which extend Context class that simply   delegates all of its calls to another Context  Can be subclassed to   modify behavior without changing the original Context    Now we Reach to Activity      The Activity is a class which extends ContextThemeWrapper that is a   single  focused thing that the user can do  Almost all activities   interact with the user  so the Activity class takes care of creating a   window for you   Below Classes are restricted to extend but they are extended by their descender internally and provide support for specific Api       The SupportActivity is a class which extends Activity that is a Base class for composing together compatibility functionality      The BaseFragmentActivityApi14 is a class which extends SupportActivity   that is a Base class It is restricted class but it is extend by   BaseFragmentActivityApi16 to support the functionality of V14        The   BaseFragmentActivityApi16 is a class which extends   BaseFragmentActivityApi14 that is a Base class for   code   FragmentActivity  to be able to use v16 APIs  But it is also   restricted class but it is extend by FragmentActivity to support the   functionality of V16    now FragmentActivty     The FragmentActivity is a class which extends   BaseFragmentActivityApi16 and that wants to use the support-based   Fragment and Loader APIs    When using this class as opposed to new platform s built-in fragment and loader support  you must use the getSupportFragmentManager   and getSupportLoaderManager   methods respectively to access those features      ActionBarActivity is part of the Support Library  Support libraries are used to deliver newer features on older platforms  For   example the ActionBar was introduced in API 11 and is part of the   Activity by default  depending on the theme actually   In contrast   there is no ActionBar on the older platforms  So the support   library adds a child class of Activity  ActionBarActivity  that   provides the ActionBar s functionality and ui   In 2015 ActionBarActivity is deprecated in revision 22 1 0 of the Support Library  AppCompatActivity should be used instead      The AppcompactActivity is a class which extends   FragmentActivity that is Base class for activities that use the support library action bar features    You can add an ActionBar to your activity when running on API level 7 or higher by extending this class for your activity and setting the activity theme to Theme AppCompat or a similar theme    I refer these two one two

[android] Activity, AppCompatActivity, FragmentActivity, and ActionBarActivity: When to Use Which?

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