onActivityResult() not called inside a TabHost

Question

I have two Activities, one is a picker activity and the other is a list of choices. Once a choice is clicked, data is returned to the picker activity.

These two activities are part of an activity group and the activity group is a TabSpec inside a TabHost.

Everything works fine when the picker Activity is the launch activity. It also works fine when the ActivityGroup is the launch activity. It does not work (but no error) when the TabHost is the launch activity. Is there some Intent flag or getParent() I need to be doing to get this to work?

public class MyActivity extends Activity {
 static final int MY_REQUEST = 0;
 @Override
 public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
 super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
 setContentView(R.layout.my_picker);
 Button button = (Button) findViewById(R.id.my_button);
 button.setOnClickListener(buttonOnClickListener);
 }
 private OnClickListener buttonOnClickListener = new OnClickListener() {
 @Override
 public void onClick(View view) {
 Intent intent = new Intent(MyActivity.this, SubActivity.class);
 startActivityForResult(inent, MY_REQUEST);
 }
 };
 protected void onActivityResult(int requestCode, int resultCode, Intent data) {
 if (requestCode == MY_REQUEST) {
 if (resultCode == RESULT_OK) {
 String item = data.getStringExtra("item");
 //do something
 }
 }
 if (resultCode == RESULT_CANCELED) {
 }
 }
}
public class SubActivity extends Activity {
 private ArrayAdapter<String> adapter;
 @Override
 public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
 super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
 setContentView(R.layout.my_sublayout);
 ListView listView = (ListView) findViewById(R.id.list);
 String[] items = {"red", "blue", "black", "green"};
 adapter = new ArrayAdapter<String>(this, android.R.layout.simple_expandable_list_item_1, items);
 listView.setAdapter(adapter);
 listView.setOnItemClickListener(listOnItemClickListener);
 }
 private OnItemClickListener listOnItemClickListener = new OnItemClickListener() {
 @Override
 public void onItemClick(AdapterView<?> parent, View view, int position, long id) {
 Intent intent = new Intent();
 String item = adapter.getItem(position);
 intent.putExtra("item", item);
 setResult(RESULT_OK, intent);
 finish();
 }
 };
}

The code for launching the activity inside a tab is fairly standard but here it is:

public class TabsActivity extends TabActivity {
 @Override
 public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
 super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
 setContentView(R.layout.tabs);
 TabHost tabHost = getTabHost();
 Intent intent= new Intent().setClass(this, MyActivityGroup.class);
 TabSpec tabSpecMyActivity = tabHost
 .newTabSpec(getString(R.string.my_title))
 .setIndicator(getString(R.string.my_title))
 .setContent(intent);
 tabHost.addTab(tabSpecMyActivity );
 tabHost.setCurrentTab(0);
 }
}

• meh: Why aren't you using actionbar with fragments instead? Didn't they deprecate tab host and tabs activity?
• Jason Christa: @user1597833 because the is no first-party support for the actionbar in Android 2.3
• meh: well I still wouldn't use deprecated classes in my applications, does your code works on ics and later versions ? or do you write completely different code for different android versions ?
• Jason Christa: @user1597833 Android is forwards compatible, which is why I am targeting 2.3
• Thomas: There is an ActionBar compatibility sample app. It can be obtained by downloading the samples for the SDK. Will you please post the code for the list of choices as well?

Answer 1

Have you considered not calling finish() method inside onItemClick() method while going to other activity because it can terminate this activity and then if we come back on this activity, it will start again from onCreate().

• Joe: I don't see how this answer will make the onActivityResult() become called under the TabHost scenario as described by the question. Can any of the upvoters explain?

Answer 2

I asked about how you instantiated MyActivity and SubActivity from within MyActivityGroup in the comment above because I don't think you really needed to use MyActivityGroup when you are running your TabsActivity. So in TabsActivity.onCreate(), instead of:

 Intent intent = new Intent().setClass(this, MyActivityGroup.class);

You can just do:

 Intent intent = new Intent().setClass(this, MyActivity.class);

With the above change, your MyActivity.onActivityResult() should be called as expected.

If you really need to have MyActivityGroup inside your TabsActivity, let me know and I will update this answer with additional modifications (in TabsActivity.onActivityResult() and MyActivityGroup.startActivityFromChild()) to make it work.

Answer 3

You need to start a startChildActivityForResult with the given parent your tabhost, this works in my application

sample:

Intent intent = new Intent(getParent(), childActivity.class);
TabGroupActivity parentActivity = (TabGroupActivity)getParent();
parentActivity.startChildActivityForResult("childActivity", intent, RESULT_OK);

Answer 4

I had same issue like you when I was using the startActivityForResult method with the tab and ActivityGroup.

Actually problem is that when you start the activity from the ActivityGroup then you will not receive the ActivityResult within the calling activity instead you will get the result in the parent activity ie. ActivityGroup.

Try to override the onActivityResult method of the ActivityGroup and print the result there you will get the response there.