Tracking the application's life cycle

In the "safe" Microsoft Windows desktop application development land, our application has a life cycle, but it is not crucial to take care of it. Usually, you have a set of events to handle such as FormCreate, FormClose (at the form level), or Application OnRestore or Application OnTerminate. In some cases, you have to handle the state where the main application window is minimized, and this is still simple. In the mobile world, as usual, things are a bit more complex. The concept of a life cycle is evidence of this. Just to make things messier, the Android activity's life cycle is different from the iOS view life cycle. Remember, when an app is in the background, it can be completely destroyed.

Getting ready

But, hey! Why I should care about the life cycle? That's a very good point! There are a lot of things that you should, or must, do while your application is switching from one state to another.

Here are some examples:

• Handle the current input control...