Android – How to prevent going back to the previous activity

activity-stackandroidbackback-stack

When the BACK button is pressed on the phone, I want to prevent a specific activity from returning to its previous one.

Specifically, I have login and sign up screens, both start a new activity called HomeScreen when successful login/signup occurs. Once HomeScreen is started, I want to prevent the users from being able to return to the login or sign up screens by pressing the BACK key.

I tried using Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_NO_HISTORY, but since the application has Facebook integration, when the 'Login with Facebook' is used, Facebook should return to the initial login screen, therefore I should keep a history of these activities.

I thought of overriding the behaviour of the BACK button on HomeScreen to directly finish an application when the button is pressed and I used

@Override
public void onBackPressed() {
    finish();
}

but that also does not work.

Best Answer

My suggestion would be to finish the activity that you don't want the users to go back to. For instance, in your sign in activity, right after you call startActivity, call finish(). When the users hit the back button, they will not be able to go to the sign in activity because it has been killed off the stack.

Related Solutions

Android – How to save an activity state using the save instance state

You need to override onSaveInstanceState(Bundle savedInstanceState) and write the application state values you want to change to the Bundle parameter like this:

@Override
public void onSaveInstanceState(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
  super.onSaveInstanceState(savedInstanceState);
  // Save UI state changes to the savedInstanceState.
  // This bundle will be passed to onCreate if the process is
  // killed and restarted.
  savedInstanceState.putBoolean("MyBoolean", true);
  savedInstanceState.putDouble("myDouble", 1.9);
  savedInstanceState.putInt("MyInt", 1);
  savedInstanceState.putString("MyString", "Welcome back to Android");
  // etc.
}

The Bundle is essentially a way of storing a NVP ("Name-Value Pair") map, and it will get passed in to onCreate() and also onRestoreInstanceState() where you would then extract the values from activity like this:

@Override
public void onRestoreInstanceState(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
  super.onRestoreInstanceState(savedInstanceState);
  // Restore UI state from the savedInstanceState.
  // This bundle has also been passed to onCreate.
  boolean myBoolean = savedInstanceState.getBoolean("MyBoolean");
  double myDouble = savedInstanceState.getDouble("myDouble");
  int myInt = savedInstanceState.getInt("MyInt");
  String myString = savedInstanceState.getString("MyString");
}

Or from a fragment.

@Override
public void onViewStateRestored(@Nullable Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    super.onViewStateRestored(savedInstanceState);
    // Restore UI state from the savedInstanceState.
    // This bundle has also been passed to onCreate.
    boolean myBoolean = savedInstanceState.getBoolean("MyBoolean");
    double myDouble = savedInstanceState.getDouble("myDouble");
    int myInt = savedInstanceState.getInt("MyInt");
    String myString = savedInstanceState.getString("MyString");
}

You would usually use this technique to store instance values for your application (selections, unsaved text, etc.).

Android – Sending data back to the Main Activity in Android

There are a couple of ways to achieve what you want, depending on the circumstances.

The most common scenario (which is what yours sounds like) is when a child Activity is used to get user input - such as choosing a contact from a list or entering data in a dialog box. In this case you should use startActivityForResult to launch your child Activity.

This provides a pipeline for sending data back to the main Activity using setResult. The setResult method takes an int result value and an Intent that is passed back to the calling Activity.

Intent resultIntent = new Intent();
// TODO Add extras or a data URI to this intent as appropriate.
resultIntent.putExtra("some_key", "String data"); 
setResult(Activity.RESULT_OK, resultIntent);
finish();

To access the returned data in the calling Activity override onActivityResult. The requestCode corresponds to the integer passed in in the startActivityForResult call, while the resultCode and data Intent are returned from the child Activity.

@Override
public void onActivityResult(int requestCode, int resultCode, Intent data) {
  super.onActivityResult(requestCode, resultCode, data);
  switch(requestCode) {
    case (MY_CHILD_ACTIVITY) : {
      if (resultCode == Activity.RESULT_OK) {
        // TODO Extract the data returned from the child Activity.
        String returnValue = data.getStringExtra("some_key");
      }
      break;
    } 
  }
}

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Android – How to save an activity state using the save instance state

Android – Sending data back to the Main Activity in Android

Related Topic