Hi Mark.

howdy, Tom!

how can I help you today?

Yes, I have a question...

I have a variety of classes for which the member functions requires a Context, or some other system handle (e.g. a reference to TelephonyManager). I'd like to pass the handle into an instance just once and have it hold that handle through its whole lifetime (which is often the lifetime of the app) to avoid having to keep passing the handle to member functions. Somehow though, I feel like it is a bad idea for my class instance to hold a system handle for so long, so I don't do it. Can you comment on this?

personally, I don't do this

I try to follow the approaches used by the Android SDK

and they take the Context as a parameter on methods when they need it

that being said, an Application object is a safe Context to hold onto for a long time, at least in terms of memory leaks

you get this via getApplicationContext() from some other Context

so, for example, in WakefulIntentService, I need to hold a WakeLock for the life of a process

I create that WakeLock using the Application object, just to be safe, so I don't introduce a memory leak

Okay, that sounds like a good idea. I was kinda hoping you would say it is safe to hold anything - this would make my function signitures cleaner - but I suspected that it would be a bad idea.

Also, the way I'm doing it now I feel that I must be careful to be consistent with my system handles, e.g. I try to make sure that I use the same context for de-registering an event as I used to register it.

Let me take this opportunity to say that I enjoy your editorials (which I catch in Google Reader), but I think it would be nice (for argumentative readers) if there way a way to respond, e.g. blog comments.

yeah, well, I specifically decided against that, to help keep my blood pressure in check... :-)

it's possible I'll tie in DISQUS or something someday

Yeah, I know what you mean. Anyway, thanks - that's all for today.

OK