I had an inner class that I wanted to pull out into a more general library "Helper" class. I had the same issue you do. I got around it by making the helper class abstract, with a single abstract method. Then in my project package I extended the helper class with a constructor call in the specific class.
public class MyActivity extends Activity {
onCreate() {
MyHelperClass = new MyHelperClass(this, "foobar");
}
public void myMethod() {
// Code...
}
}
// In a different file
public class MyHelperClass extends HelperClass {
private MyActivity mInstance;
public MyHelperClass(MyActivity act, String data) {
super();
this.mInstance = act;
this.mActivity = act; // Useful for calling generic Activity methods in the HelperClass
this.mData = data;
}
protected void callMyActivityMethod() {
mInstance.myMethod();
}
}
// In a different file
public abstract class HelperClass {
protected Activity mActivity;
protected String mData;
public HelperClass() {
// Subclass will set variables
}
protected abstract void callMyActivityMethod();
// More code for all the other stuff the class does
}
In this way, I have a helper class that contains the vast majority of the "work", and all I have to do is make a subclass with the constructor and one method in order to get access to the calling activity's method of interest.