The order of Android Fragment lifecycle methods: onCreate, onCreateView, onResume, and onCreateOptionsMenu

By Alvin Alexander. Last updated: June 4, 2016

As a quick “note to self” about the Android Fragment lifecycle, including when the onCreateOptionsMenu method is executed, I have this debug output from an "Images GridView" in my current application.

The first time I go to the Images GridView:

04-13 14:59:29.484    2560-2560/com.alvinalexander.myapp I/VPImagesGridFragment﹕ ENTERED onCreate
04-13 14:59:29.485    2560-2560/com.alvinalexander.myapp I/VPFetchItemsTask﹕     ENTERED FetchItemsTask constructor
04-13 14:59:29.485    2560-2560/com.alvinalexander.myapp I/VPImagesGridFragment﹕ ENTERED onCreateView
04-13 14:59:29.492    2560-2560/com.alvinalexander.myapp I/VPImagesGridFragment﹕ ENTERED onResume
04-13 14:59:29.492    2560-2560/com.alvinalexander.myapp I/VPImagesGridFragment﹕ ENTERED onCreateOptionsMenu
04-13 14:59:29.610    2560-2560/com.alvinalexander.myapp I/VPFetchItemsTask﹕     LEAVING FetchItemsTask::onPostExecute
04-13 14:59:29.935    2560-2560/com.alvinalexander.myapp I/VPImagesGridFragment﹕ ENTERED onCreateOptionsMenu

When I close the app with the middle Android button:

04-13 15:00:34.330    2560-2560/com.alvinalexander.myapp I/VPImagesGridFragment﹕ ENTERED onPause
04-13 15:00:34.348    2560-2560/com.alvinalexander.myapp I/VPImagesGridFragment﹕ ENTERED onStop

When I come back to the app, with the Images GridView showing:

04-13 15:01:29.013    2560-2560/com.alvinalexander.myapp I/VPImagesGridFragment﹕ ENTERED onResume

When I left Images and went to Quotes:

04-13 15:02:08.077    2560-2560/com.alvinalexander.myapp I/VPImagesGridFragment﹕ ENTERED onCreateOptionsMenu
04-13 15:02:10.913    2560-2560/com.alvinalexander.myapp I/VPImagesGridFragment﹕ ENTERED onPause
04-13 15:02:10.913    2560-2560/com.alvinalexander.myapp I/VPImagesGridFragment﹕ ENTERED onStop
04-13 15:02:11.357    2560-2572/com.alvinalexander.myapp W/art﹕ Suspending all threads took: 5.694ms

When I come back to Images:

04-13 15:02:50.652    2560-2560/com.alvinalexander.myapp I/VPImagesGridFragment﹕ ENTERED onCreate
04-13 15:02:50.652    2560-2560/com.alvinalexander.myapp I/VPFetchItemsTask﹕     ENTERED FetchItemsTask constructor
04-13 15:02:50.652    2560-2560/com.alvinalexander.myapp I/VPImagesGridFragment﹕ ENTERED onCreateView
04-13 15:02:50.654    2560-2560/com.alvinalexander.myapp I/VPImagesGridFragment﹕ ENTERED onResume
04-13 15:02:50.655    2560-2560/com.alvinalexander.myapp I/VPImagesGridFragment﹕ ENTERED onCreateOptionsMenu
04-13 15:02:50.711    2560-2560/com.alvinalexander.myapp I/VPFetchItemsTask﹕     LEAVING FetchItemsTask::onPostExecute
04-13 15:02:51.087    2560-2560/com.alvinalexander.myapp I/VPImagesGridFragment﹕ ENTERED onCreateOptionsMenu

As you can see from those examples, the onCreateOptionsMenu method is called after the onCreate, onCreateView, and onResume lifecycle methods.

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