What are the problems of accessing Application context via static method

Question

I'm looking for ways to access application context in some classes that are used in background threads.

Besides that I'm avoiding to pass the context from my UI as a parameter to every single class.

With this in mind I'm doing something like this:

public class LojaApplication extends Application {

    private static Context applicationContext;

    @Override
    public void onCreate() {
        super.onCreate();

        applicationContext = this;
    }

    public static Context getMyContext() {
        return applicationContext;
    }
}

And then using it:

public class WorkerClass {
    private final Context applicationContext;

    public WorkerClass() {
        this.context = MyApplication.getMyContext();
    }

    public void doSomeStuffOnBackground(){
        ...
        String string = applicationContext.getString(...)
        ...
    }
}

I was worried that MyApplication.getMyContext() would return null if called inside a static block, but in my tests this works as well.

Is there a scenario that this might fail? Or problems that I'm failing to predict?

The point here is that I'm trying to avoid passing the context around as a parameter. I'm aware that is possible to access the Application Context via Context.getApplicationContext() that come from the Activity, but to do that I need to pass it as a parameter, what I'm trying to avoid.

PS.: I'm aware of the limitations of Application Context vs Activity Context.

If your application is running in any way shape or form the application context will not be null. That being said, you should still be very careful passing around a static context. Not that it is the same with an application as it is an activity, but it can lead to bad practices. — zgc7009, Jun 15 '16 at 14:22
Why you don't use a `singleton` and store the `applicationContext` in it? — Kevin Wallis, Jun 15 '16 at 14:31
@SQLiteNoob is the method `getApplicationContext()` not inherited from the `Application`? So it is not possible to call it from somewhere else — Kevin Wallis, Jun 15 '16 at 15:21
@SQLiteNoob to do that I would need to pass Activity(Context) as parameter, which I'm trying to avoid. — Cedulio Cezar, Jun 15 '16 at 15:53
@CedulioCezar the method `getApplicationContext` is a method from the class `ContextWrapper` so only class which inherit from this class contain also this method. Or have you asked about the `singleton`? — Kevin Wallis, Jun 15 '16 at 16:05
it would be possible to use a singleton approach instead of `static` — Kevin Wallis, Jun 16 '16 at 19:12

What are the problems of accessing Application context via static method

0 Answers0