Trying to read UI to persist activity data
<p>Since my app doesn't have any data not represented by the UI, I have tried to read the UI widgets in order to restore the state of the underlying 'model' object when an event such as a screen rotate happens. It doesn't seem to work for EditText but does for Spinners which seems odd. Here are some code fragments:</p>

<pre><code>protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {

    super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
    setContentView(R.layout.activity_main);
    ....
    metalSpinner = (Spinner) findViewById(R.id.metal_spinner);
    ....
    lengthText = (EditText) findViewById(R.id.length_edittext);
    ....
    createAndInitializeModel();
}

private void createAndInitializeModel() {
    vdropModel = new VdropModel();
    ....
    String al = (String) (metalSpinner.getSelectedItem());
    vdropModel.setAlum(al.equals("Aluminum"));
    ....
    if (!(lengthText.getText().toString().equals(""))) {
        vdropModel.setLengthInFeet(Double.parseDouble(lengthText.getText()
                .toString()));
    }
}
</code></pre>

<p>For some reason which is not apparent to me, the 'if' statement in createAndInitializeModel() will always evaluate as false after a screen orientation change has happened, even thought the widget is still displaying a value, and vdropModel will not get restored. The value from the Spinner widget does get restored however. This doesn't make sense to me, any thoughts?</p>
