What are the differences between activity and fragment?

Devrath picture Devrath · Sep 13, 2014 · Viewed 83.7k times · Source

As per my research, there is a significant difference in the concept of backstack and how they exist:

Activity

  • When an activity is placed to the backstack of activities the user can navigate back to the previous activity by just pressing the back button.

  • Activity can exist independently.

Fragment

  • When an fragment is placed to the activity we have to request the instance to be saved by calling addToBackstack() during the fragment transaction.

  • Fragment has to live inside the activity

Are there any additional differences?

Answer

Юрій Мазуревич picture Юрій Мазуревич · Sep 13, 2014

Those are two completely different things:

An Activity is an application component that provides a screen, with which users can interact in order to do something. More details: http://developer.android.com/guide/components/activities.html

Whereas a Fragment represents a behavior or a portion of user interface in an Activity. http://developer.android.com/guide/components/fragments.html