Get context in Android?

Question

I am inside a class inside my android app, how can I get the apps main context and activity?

Thanks for your help!

This question as is, is impossible to answer. Please provide more details on your problem. What have you tried so far? What does your code look like? Also, see this: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/how-to-ask — Kurtis Nusbaum, Oct 27 '11 at 15:05
Couldn't have given more information besides "a class"? All we could assume is that it inherits from Object. — Stealth Rabbi, Oct 27 '11 at 15:21

score 26 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 27 '11 at 15:18

I am sure you already have the context but you don't know that it is the context:

Context is an abstract base class a lot of classes are inherited from.

Therefore when ever the class you are writing code for is one of the following you have you context by using the this reference:

ContextWrapper
MockContext
AbstractInputMethodService
AccessibilityService
AccountAuthenticatorActivity
Activity
ActivityGroup
AliasActivity
Application
BackupAgent
BackupAgentHelper
ContextThemeWrapper
ExpandableListActivity
InputMethodService
IntentService
IsolatedContext
LauncherActivity
ListActivity
MockApplication
MutableContextWrapper
NativeActivity
PreferenceActivity
RecognitionService
RemoteViewsService
RenamingDelegatingContext
Service
SpellCheckerService
TabActivity
TextToSpeechService
VpnService
WallpaperService

Hence you can write:

Context context = this;

or

Context context = (Context) this;

Thanks for clarifying this - I didn't know it. – marienke Mar 22 '13 at 10:45 — marienke, Mar 22 '13 at 10:45

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 27 '11 at 15:18

1

If it's a custom view: there is a paramater context which is your activity.

Activity activity = (Activity)context;

If it's a different class just send the activity in the constrctor.

answered Oct 27 '11 at 15:18

Raz

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score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Feb 14 '17 at 10:04

As @Robert mentioned, Context is an abstract class and what you have are structures:

Context < ContextWrapper < Application

Context < ContextWrapper < ContextThemeWrapper < Activity

Context < ContextWrapper < ContextThemeWrapper < Activity < ListActivity

Context < ContextWrapper < Service

Context < ContextWrapper < Service < IntentService

So, all of those classes are contexts in their own way. You can cast Service and ListActivity to Context if you wish. But if you look closely, some of the classes inherit theme as well. In activity or fragment, you would like theming to be applied to your views, but don't care about it elsewhere.

I explain the difference in contexts here.

Get context in Android?

3 Answers3

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