finish activity in onActivityResult does not work

Question

I have a pair of activities that must live or die together. Basically AlphaActivity does some work and then dispatches an intent (startActivityForResult()) for BetaActivity. When BetaActivity is done, I want it to dispatch an intent (startActivity()) for GammaActivity and then call finish() on itself. Upon finishing I was hoping for AlphaActivity's onActivityResult() method to be called, but that never seems to happen. My design is such that inside AlphaActivity's onActivityResult(), I call finish(). My plan is such that once GammaActivity is reached, a user cannot ever return to either AlphaActivity or BetaActivity. But presently the back button does take the user to the AlphaActivity.

I do have some ideas why it's not working, but discussing them here is pointless since I am interested in what might actually work.

EDIT:

The code is all quite standard stuff:

From inside Alpha

private void startBetaActivity() {
    Intent intent = new Intent(this, BetaActivity.class);
    startActivityForResult(intent, Constant.EXIT_CODE);

}

@Override
protected void onActivityResult(int requestCode, int resultCode, Intent data) {
    super.onActivityResult(requestCode, resultCode, data);

    if (resultCode == RESULT_OK) {
        if (requestCode == Constant.EXIT_CODE) {
            this.finish();
        }
    }
}

From inside Beta:

if (success) {
            startGammaActivity();
            finish();
        }

Solution 1

I think you just need to:

if (success) {
        startGammaActivity();
        setResult(Activity.RESULT_OK); //add this
        finish();
}

Solution 2

In my perspective you should follow this,

1. AlphaActivity starts BetaActivity for result with X request code
2. BetaActivity does his work and then calls setResult(Y, Z) and call finish()
3. AlphaActivity will run onActivityResult with RequestCode X, ResultCode Y and data Z. If X and Y are the ones that you are expecting then starts GammaActivity and finally call finish() on AlphaActivity

You should not start GammaActivity on BetaActivity because the AlphaActivity onActivityResult will not work properly.

Solution 3

You have not called setResult()

if (success) {
        startGammaActivity();
        setResult(RESULT_OK);
        finish();
    }

Or if you never need to go back from BetaActivity to AlphaActivity then in both activities manifest put android:noHistory=true

Comments

[learner]

Thanks for the input, especially the bit about android:noHistory=true. I accepted the other because it looks like his was first. +1

[Hoan Nguyen]

You did the right thing, I voted him up too. By the way if you ever setResult in onBackpress then you have to setResult before calling super()

[learner]

Thanks. I didn't know that.