is there a way to make actionBar back button resend an intent with putExtra?

Question

I have an activity that has a recyclerview that populates its data based on the yearSelected string forwarded from the previous activity with an intent and put extra. then I choose a row and navigate to the next activity to show the week selected info. when I want to return to the previous activity using the action bars back button it crashes, I'm guessing because I'm no longer sending the intent info when I return back. is there a place I can use putExtra when it returns back or is there a way to set the back button to just return to the previous activity like the back button on the bottom does?

Answer 1

Actually, the action bar should behave like a menu. You can listen for the "back" button and perform whatever action you need to in onOptionsItemSelected..

eg

public boolean onOptionsItemSelected(MenuItem item) {
    ...
    switch (item.getItemId()) {
    case android.R.id.home:
        <set return result etc and finish> 
        return true;
    ...

Note that the back button item id is android.R.id.home .. because the same item is used for home as up (and hamburger menu from memory).

Also, finishing and activity in the middle of handling an event isn't great practice, but commonly done.