Difference between extending LifecycleActivity,Activity,ActionbarActivity & AppCompactActivity?

Question

In Android what is the main difference between extending Lifecycler Activity, Activity,ActionBarActivity & AppCompactActivity? How do these classes differ from each othe

Answer 1

If you look carefully, you will see this

public class ActionBarActivity extends FragmentActivity
implements ActionBarDrawerToggle.DelegateProvider TaskStackBuilder.SupportParentable

Here you can read about FragmentActivity: http://developer.android.com/reference/android/support/v4/app/FragmentActivity.html

And differences between Activity and FragmentActivity: Difference between Activity and FragmentActivity

Also, there are some new themes for styling actionBar... https://developer.android.com/training/basics/actionbar/styling.html

Actionbar is introduced in API level 11. com.android.support:appcompat-v7:+ is a support library which allows you to have an ActionBar in your app for devices running on Android 3.0 or below. So, if you need actionbar below api level 11 your Activity needs to extend ActionBarActivity.

If you are targetting api level 11 and above then you don't need to extend ActionBarActivity and reference AppCompat. You can simply extend Activity and you will have actionabr by default.

Android Studio default project includes it automatically in dependencies and extends ActionbarActivity instead of Activity in order to use it.