Android - Do activity realases fragment references when finished?

Issue

According to Android Developer site, the correct way of communicating an activity with their fragment is through listeners.

https://developer.android.com/training/basics/fragments/communicating

My question is, this fragment is holding a reference to the activity... when the activity is destroyed, will the fragment manager release the fragment and thus the fragment will be collected and so the activity? or do they hold a strong reference that needs to be nullified too in the Fragment's onDestroy?

Solution

The Fragments Lifecycle is bound to the one of the Activity. Imagine an Activity as the Universe and Fragments as Planets / Stars. If the Universe dies, so do the Stars / Planets inside of it. Similarly, if an Activity gets destroyed so do all of it's Fragments.

The official documentation (which you should definitely check out) explains it very well:

A fragment must always be hosted in an activity and the fragment's lifecycle is directly affected by the host activity's lifecycle. For example, when the activity is paused, so are all fragments in it, and when the activity is destroyed, so are all fragments. However, while an activity is running (it is in the resumed lifecycle state), you can manipulate each fragment independently, such as add or remove them.

Answered By - Rene Ferrari