How to send an object from one Android Activity to another using Intents?

Solution 1:

If you're just passing objects around then Parcelable was designed for this. It requires a little more effort to use than using Java's native serialization, but it's way faster (and I mean way, WAY faster).

From the docs, a simple example for how to implement is:

// simple class that just has one member property as an example
public class MyParcelable implements Parcelable {
    private int mData;

    /* everything below here is for implementing Parcelable */

    // 99.9% of the time you can just ignore this
    @Override
    public int describeContents() {
        return 0;
    }

    // write your object's data to the passed-in Parcel
    @Override
    public void writeToParcel(Parcel out, int flags) {
        out.writeInt(mData);
    }

    // this is used to regenerate your object. All Parcelables must have a CREATOR that implements these two methods
    public static final Parcelable.Creator<MyParcelable> CREATOR = new Parcelable.Creator<MyParcelable>() {
        public MyParcelable createFromParcel(Parcel in) {
            return new MyParcelable(in);
        }

        public MyParcelable[] newArray(int size) {
            return new MyParcelable[size];
        }
    };

    // example constructor that takes a Parcel and gives you an object populated with it's values
    private MyParcelable(Parcel in) {
        mData = in.readInt();
    }
}

Observe that in the case you have more than one field to retrieve from a given Parcel, you must do this in the same order you put them in (that is, in a FIFO approach).

Once you have your objects implement Parcelable it's just a matter of putting them into your Intents with putExtra():

Intent i = new Intent();
i.putExtra("name_of_extra", myParcelableObject);

Then you can pull them back out with getParcelableExtra():

Intent i = getIntent();
MyParcelable myParcelableObject = (MyParcelable) i.getParcelableExtra("name_of_extra");

If your Object Class implements Parcelable and Serializable then make sure you do cast to one of the following:

i.putExtra("parcelable_extra", (Parcelable) myParcelableObject);
i.putExtra("serializable_extra", (Serializable) myParcelableObject);

Solution 2:

You'll need to serialize your object into some kind of string representation. One possible string representation is JSON, and one of the easiest ways to serialize to/from JSON in android, if you ask me, is through Google GSON.

In that case you just put the string return value from (new Gson()).toJson(myObject); and retrieve the string value and use fromJson to turn it back into your object.

If your object isn't very complex, however, it might not be worth the overhead, and you could consider passing the separate values of the object instead.

Solution 3:

You can send serializable object through intent

// send where details is object
ClassName details = new ClassName();
Intent i = new Intent(context, EditActivity.class);
i.putExtra("Editing", details);
startActivity(i);


//receive
ClassName model = (ClassName) getIntent().getSerializableExtra("Editing");

And 

Class ClassName implements Serializable {
} 

Solution 4:

For situations where you know you will be passing data within an application, use "globals" (like static Classes)

Here is what Dianne Hackborn (hackbod - a Google Android Software Engineer) had to say on the matter:

For situations where you know the activities are running in the same process, you can just share data through globals. For example, you could have a global HashMap<String, WeakReference<MyInterpreterState>> and when you make a new MyInterpreterState come up with a unique name for it and put it in the hash map; to send that state to another activity, simply put the unique name into the hash map and when the second activity is started it can retrieve the MyInterpreterState from the hash map with the name it receives.