Develop Reference

Best way to update Android-UI in while loop

I'm working on a Tetris-app and I have a Thread.sleep command to animate the falling of the tetriminos. But that creates a conflict with the UI. So I tried runOnUiThread() like this:
while (gameover == false) {
tetriminoSettled = false;
try {
Thread.sleep(1000 - (counter * 3));
} catch (InterruptedException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
runOnUiThread(new Runnable() {
#Override
public void run() {
Random ran = new Random();
int x = ran.nextInt(7) + 1;
addTetrimino(createTetrimino(x)); //the UI operation
gridView.invalidate();
}
});
But the UI gets only updated after the game ends.
Do you think AsyncTask is a good approach?
Please try to keep in mind that I later need additional UI-Threads for shifting the tetriminos left and right and so on.
Thanks!

Judging from the code you posted, it looks like you are using a gridview for a game. It is possible but not worth the effort. Just use a SurfaceView as shown in this short tutorial. You'll have an onDraw callback in which you can update whatever you like every drawing cycle. Have fun, coding games is really hard :).

Try gridView.postInvalidate();

execute the runnable in a continuous loop

My code mainly decodes a series of bitmap objects to be displayed in an ImageView later. To get more control over the duration to display each image. So i implemented the code in a Runnable. Here is a snippet of that runnable.
final File file[]=dir.listFiles();
iv.postDelayed(
new Runnable() {
#Override
public void run() {
i++;
Bitmap bitmap = decodeFile(file[i]);
iv.setImageBitmap(bitmap);
iv.postDelayed(this, 5000);
}
}, 5000);
However, I don't seem to have a good control over the looping here. I am not able to use a for loop since "i" cant be assigned to zero in this case. This code works as long as the "file[i]" has a File reference to it. As soon as it displays all the images once, the app just force closes do to arrayindexoutofbounds exception. I just want to continue the loop infinitely. Any pointers?
Here decodeFile() calls another function to rescale the size of the bitmap.

I'm not really sure what you are doing, but why not use a while loop instead? Something like while (true) { } would cause the infinite loop.

sense you want to do some work that might take a while and you want do repeat it, try looking at an android component called service and send it the images by intent.
http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/fundamentals/services.html
probably an IntentService would be fine, and help alot
http://developer.android.com/reference/android/app/IntentService.html

I suggest an AsyncTask
File means a file array is given the task to be processed in the background.
Bitmap means you call publishProgress with your bitmap, you fetch it on the UI thread in onProgressUpdate
Void means you simply stop once it is done.
The good thing here is that the decoding is done on a background thread, but the iv.setBitmap is still called on the UI thread, which is mandatory.

Just reset to zero once you reach the end:
final File file[]=dir.listFiles();
iv.postDelayed(
new Runnable() {
#Override
public void run() {
if (i == file.length) {
i = 0;
}
else {
i++;
}
Bitmap bitmap = decodeFile(file[i]);
iv.setImageBitmap(bitmap);
iv.postDelayed(this, 5000);
}
}, 5000);

How to load images from server properly?

I have a code below, this code works perfectly fine when you are trying to load one or two images. However, the problem is, when you have a lot of images in one Activity, all images must load first before you can get in. My question is, what is the best way to handle this images? I want the images to load one by one and not simultaneously. I want it to load just like the ListView made by Fedor "http://stackoverflow.com/questions/541966/android-how-do-i-do-a-lazy-load-of-images-in-listview" (Note: I'm not using a ListView, I just want my images to load like that). Please help me, I would really appreciate it a lot. Thanks in advance!
class ImageDownlaodThread extends Thread {
ImageDownloadMessageHandler imageDownloadMessageHandler;
String imageUrl;
#Override
public void run() {
Drawable drawable = LoadImageFromWebOperations(imageUrl);
Message message = imageDownloadMessageHandler.obtainMessage(1, drawable);
System.out.println("Message sent");
}
}
class ImageDownloadMessageHandler extends Handler {
View imageTextView;
}
#Override
public void handleMessage(Message message) {
progressBar.setVisibility(View.GONE);
imageTextView.setVisibility(View.VISIBLE);
}
}
Drawable LoadImageFromWebOperations(String url) {
Drawable d = null;
InputStream is = null;
try {
} catch (IOException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
return d;
}

Would this tutorial help [TUT] ImageView with Loading Spinner:
http://www.anddev.org/novice-tutorials-f8/imageview-with-loading-spinner-t49439.html
It basically show's a spinner until the image has loaded from the remote site :-)
You could strip the code to show a blank space / whatever you want till it loads.
If you don't want anything to happen till it all loads, you could have a count of how many images there are and then increment this each time an image has loaded.

IMO, AsyncTask is the easiest way to do this; in fact, it was basically built for this sort of task.
There's really too much to discuss in a StackOverflow answer. Just see Painless Threading to get started.

Task not finishing and forbidding TextView to be updated

I am now working on an android app in which I need to display a text after some processing is done.
I'm using a Thread to run a process in the back while my progress dialog is being displayed to the user. The Thread works properly and I've followed it step by step and, apparently, it also ends fine; however, the method in which I call it does not seem to come to an end (at least, during a normal cycle) because the text I am setting afterward does display immediately, I have to wait and do some other action (like in order for it to display
Below is the piece of code I'm having trouble with:
private OnClickListener saldoDisp = new OnClickListener(){
public void onClick(View v){
int x = s2.getSelectedItemPosition();
branchSel = arrSucsId[x];
mainProc();
saldoAdminTex.setText(strSaldo); //The late one
}
};
public void mainProc(){
chekP = new Thread (null,doProc,"Background");
chekP.start();
mProgress =ProgressDialog.show(SivetaAsaldo.this, "","Obteniendo saldo...",true, false);
}
private Runnable doProc = new Runnable(){
public void run(){
if(getSaldoAdmin(levelSel,branchSel))
{
mProgress.dismis();
Log.i(TAG,"Task completed properly");
}else
handler.post(tosti);
}
};
So I do get the "Task completed properly" but seems like it still waits for something else, any clues guys?
Thanks for taking a bit of your time to check it out =).

saldoAdminTex.setText(strSaldo); //The late one
is going to get called immediately. It doesn't wait until after the Thread started in mainProc ends. You also cannot dismiss the Progress Dialog in your runnable. You can only do UI related things on the main UI thread.
It would help you to read the article on Painless Threading on the Android Dev site.

About your ProgressDialog, please see this answer about how to use a AsyncTask with a ProgressDialog.

Looking at your code, this:
saldoAdminTex.setText(strSaldo);
would potentially be executed before your thread finishes as the thread will be running in parallel to that line.
An alternative way would be to do this:
public void mainProc(){
mProgress =ProgressDialog.show(SivetaAsaldo.this, "","Obteniendo saldo...",true,false);
handler.post(new Runable(){
public void run(){
if(getSaldoAdmin(levelSel,branchSel))
{
mProgress.dismis();
saldoAdminTex.setText(strSaldo);
Log.i(TAG,"Task completed properly");
}else
handler.post(tosti);
}
});
}

Queuing threads in Android

my app wants to update pictures on the web on a regular basis. This doesn't require UI feedback, so I just start a new Thread and let it run. The problem is, that this update-method may be called before the previous one has been finished. How can I make sure that the second call doesn't start a new thread but is queued and automatically started when the previous one finished? Are handlers the right solution here as well?
Here the code:
public static void updatePictureOnPicasa(final PictureEntry pe) {
new Thread() {
public void run() {
try {
if(pe.isUpdated())
picasa.updatePicture(pe.getUrl(), pe.getDescription(), pe
.getTags());
} catch (Exception e) {
Log.e(Prototype.TAG, "Unable to update picture on Picasa "
+ pe.getUrl());
}
}
}.start();
}

You can use a service feature in Android.Please refer these links:
http://www.brighthub.com/mobile/google-android/articles/34861.aspx
http://marakana.com/forums/android/examples/60.html
Hope this will help you.