A Model-based approach to assist Android Activity Lifecycle Development

Abstract

Abstract— In Android app development, conforming to the activity lifecycle model is imperative to maintain app robustness and reliability as well as avoiding many issues tied to lifecycle state transitions, such as memory leaks, data preservation, and app crashes. Previous studies have shown that Android developers possess limited understanding and awareness of the activity lifecycle model and the current state of-the-art Android app development tools and methods provide developers with little support during activity lifecycle development. In this study, we present an approach and a framework that provides a dynamic visual view for the activity lifecycle state transitions during implementation. The approach follows model-based development utilizing DSVL (Domain Specific Visual Language) and is implemented as a proof-of-concept Android Studio plugin. We evaluated our approach through experimentation by real Android developers. Initial results show that our approach can be useful and effective in assisting Android developers.