SmartApplication

SmartApplication

Because the framework makes use of multiple components, it may be tedious to initialize each of them. This is the reason why it exposes the SmartApplication class, which ensures a glue between many components, and which is a good candidate for initializing them.

An Android Application class

The SmartApplication class is abstract and derived from the Android built-in Application class. When using the framework, it is strongly advised to derive from it. It overrides and makes final the Application.onCreate() method, and proposes to overload the SmartApplication.onCreateCustom() method. Do not forget to declare it in the AndroidManifest.xml.

The SmartApplication.onCreateCustom() method is the ideal place for initializing the BitmapDownloader and the Persistence components. You need to keep in mind that this method is invoked at the process start-up early stage in the UI thread, hence, you need to pay great attention to keep its execution typically under 200 ms.

The SmartApplication.getLogLevel() method will set the LoggerFactory component verbosity.

ActivityController initialization

Among other things, the SmartApplication.onCreate() method will initialize the ActivityController component, and you may tune this component by overloading the following methods:

• SmartApplication.getExceptionHandler(): this will set the ExceptionHandler,
• SmartApplication.getActivityRedirector(): this will set the Activity Redirector,
• SmartApplication.getActivityInterceptor(): this will set the Activity Interceptor.

It is convenient to inline those components implementation inside your own derived SmartApplication implementation.

i18n

Because the default SmartApplication.getExceptionHandler() method returns a DefaultExceptionHandler instance, which issues Android toast and dialog boxes when required in a i18ned way, the SmartApplication.getI18N() abstract method needs to be implemented. This method just returns an internal I18N instance, which is just a place-holder for keeping a reference on the error messages strings.

Bug detection e-mailed

The default SmartApplication.getExceptionHandler() method returns a DefaultExceptionHandler instance, which is able to read the Android logcat, and then propose to the end-user to send an e-mail with the bug context, as soon as a managed exception is detected and has not been handled. If you want to discard that feature, just let the SmartApplication.getLogReportRecipient() method return null.

The UncaughtExceptionHandler instances

Because we may want to catch some "uncaught" exceptions (this may happen when running some of your application code in the UI thread in an unmanaged section), the SmartApplication registers:

• an UncaughtExceptionHandler for the UI thread, which will invoke the ExceptionHandler, if any, and then invoke the parent UncaughtExceptionHandler.uncaughtException() method ;
• a default UncaughtExceptionHandler for all other threads, which will invoke the ExceptionHandler, if any, and then invoke the parent UncaughtExceptionHandler.uncaughtException() method.

This enables to keep track of some crashing issues.

How to disable the framework

If, for some reason, you do not want the SmartApplication to be initialized, just override the SmartApplication.shouldBeSilent() method accordingly. If this method returns true (which is not the default value), then, the ActivityController will not be initialized, and no Java default UncaughtExceptionHandler will be registered.

This may be necessary for instance, when two processes are declared for the same application, and that one the processes is running is the background, and that you do not want it to use the framework.