How to detect when an Android app goes to the background and come back to the foreground

Question

I am trying to write an app that does something specific when it is brought back to the foreground after some amount of time. Is there a way to detect when an app is sent to

Answer 1

My solution was inspired by @d60402's answer and also relies on a time-window, but not using the Timer:

public abstract class BaseActivity extends ActionBarActivity {

  protected boolean wasInBackground = false;

  @Override
  protected void onStart() {
    super.onStart();
    wasInBackground = getApp().isInBackground;
    getApp().isInBackground = false;
    getApp().lastForegroundTransition = System.currentTimeMillis();
  }

  @Override
  protected void onStop() {
    super.onStop();
    if( 1500 < System.currentTimeMillis() - getApp().lastForegroundTransition )
      getApp().isInBackground = true;
  }

  protected SingletonApplication getApp(){
    return (SingletonApplication)getApplication();
  }
}

where the SingletonApplication is an extension of Application class:

public class SingletonApplication extends Application {
  public boolean isInBackground = false;
  public long lastForegroundTransition = 0;
}