Identify if an activity has just been started

Question

Hello,

I have 2 activities.

Activity 1 is the 'Homepage' which consists of one spinner.

Activity 2 will be started once an item from the spinner has been selected in Activity 1. The value of the item will also be passed into Activity 2.

Actvity 2 also has the same spinner as Actvity 1.

I would like to make a varible (TABLE_NAME in the code below) whose value will be the selection made in Activity 1 when Activity 2 is initally started but after that the variable value will be the selection made in Activity 2.

Is there an easy way to identify if an activity has just been started?

I've tried to show what I want in the code below:

public class MyOnItemSelectedListener implements OnItemSelectedListener {

    public void onItemSelected(AdapterView<?> parent,
        View view, int pos, long id) {          

            if(this activity was just started)
            {Intent sender=getIntent();
        String TABLE_NAME=sender.getExtras().getString("TABLE_NAME");}
            else
            {TABLE_NAME = parent.getItemAtPosition(pos).toString();}            


        Cursor cursor = getStats(TABLE_NAME);             

        showStats(cursor);

    }

    public void onNothingSelected(AdapterView<?> parent) {
      // Do nothing.
    }
}

Answer 1

If this is within android (which is the tag that is on the post), you can put a hook in the 'onCreate()' method in which you save what activity you are in to the Database table. The onCreate method is called every time an activity is created/re-created.

/** Called when the activity is first created. */
@Override
public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
    //this is where you would identify the activity has been called, perhaps spinning off a thread to handle a database call:)
}

Answer 2

The following code...

Intent sender=getIntent(); String
TABLE_NAME=sender.getExtras().getString("TABLE_NAME");

... should be moved from your onItemSelected selected function, and instead be done in the onCreatefunction of your Activity 2.

And of course, while doing that you must also call your getStats/showStats after this is done in onCreate as well (or preferably, these two should be refactored into a separate function, as you will be calling this both from onCreate and onItemSelected).