The app is to communicate with a bluetooth device with assorted data (config, measurements, service logs, status telemetry) - and it should cache obtained data so the user flipping between activities doesn't need to re-download everything when coming back to a prior activity, or the data was obtained in a prior activity (e.g. the "Summary" activity gets chunks of data from others).
That means a cache object which should hold this data - and be a single-instance class.
It's been hammered into my head that Singletons Are Bad. But with Android apps having multiple entry points, I can't guarantee a single initialization path for the app or the lifespan of the object, so I'm not sure if the singleton is still wrong here - or if so, how to approach getting the single-instance class right in this scenario. What form of single-instance object should I use, to initialize it on creation and access everywhere?
Xamarin, C#, if that's of importance.
1 Answer 1
In this case I would utilize a Singleton, created when the user first needs to read or write data, backed by a database. This Singleton could be provided through a dependency injection framework (and thus not be a real Singleton) but it depends on what xamarin can offer you.
Singletons are generally bad, but only because they tend to be overused and there is often a better solution to a given problem.
I am not sure what tools xamarin give you to work with a database.