Async Task in Application OnCreate - android

I plan to make a webservice call in Application onCreate using a asyncTask. The data which the webservice will get will be used in activities later. Since it is a asyncTask there is a chance that it may not complete while the activity wants to use the data. I plan to give some visual feedback to show progress of the data download.
Is there any problem with this whole approach?

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Fetching image from image-id android

I am working on an android app to display the popular movies. I am able to fetch the result from the themoviedb.org API which gives me different values like movie-name, movie-poster-id, movie description, etc. Now I want to make another API call to fetch the posters. I already have one AsyncTask fetching the movie information, should I create another AsyncTask for images and call them one after the other ? Or there's a better way ?
AsyncTask may not be the best solution; if the device rotates the activity is destroyed and when the async task finishes, it no longer has an activity to return the data to.
If you want to use async tasks, consider using a fragment with setRetainInstance(true) to do the network call. Your activity would launch the fragment and, if destroyed, it would remove its listener from the fragment and then when recreated, it would attach its listener again - the fragment continues to run regardless of the activity life cycle.
That said, you are probably better off with other solutions, like an IntentService or a full Service, depending on your flow.
Look at Volley and Retrofit libraries to help you with the network calls as well.

Android Asynchronous Task class

currently i am working on a project with tab activity where each tab call web service to fetch data from server and show them in list view. Now i want to manage this in a way that when my app starts every tabs data will be fetched from the server and user can see them without making the web service call on every tab change listener. So is there any way to fetch all the values from web in a single service call and share those service call return objects in every activity.
In a single service call depends what the service returns, if it does not return everything you need then of course not.
But you can get all the data you need in one AsyncTask execution for sure, whether it takes one or more calls depends on the service.
Once you have the data you just need to make it accessible to all your activities which shouldn't be that hard.
Now get busy coding and return if you run into some problems that you cannot seem to solve by yourself and that you cannot find the solution for.
Good luck.

Android: How to retain AsyncTask instance when Activity gets destroyed?

In my app, I have a class that inherits from AsyncTask and which downloads huge amounts of data from the server. I am using a ProgressBar to indicate the progress of the download.
When the user hits the HOME key, the Activity to which this AsyncTask is attached, is destroyed but, download goes on.
How can I reattach this AsyncTask and show the progress to user? I tried using onRetainNonConfigurationInstance but Android 4.0 doesn't seem to invoke this method. My application does not use Fragments API.
What I did in this situation was as follows:
I created an IntentService to handle communication with the server. This has some of the benefits of AsyncTask (e.g., worker thread), but also some benefits of a Service (available any time, from anywhere).
The IntentService can be invoked either by a user action in my main Activity, or via an inexact repeating alarm.
The data is stored in an SQLite database, fronted by a ContentProvider. I dodge the issue of when/how to create my database and tables by using an SQLiteOpenHelper and calling getWritableDatabase() from the safety of my background IntentService.
When the task is done, it posts a Notification if my main Activity is not active.
One nice thing about this arrangement is, no progress bar is necessary. In fact, no UI is necessary. The user keeps using the application while the service is running, and the UI automatically refreshes itself as new data comes into the ContentProvider. Another nice aspect of it is it's less code to write than an AsyncTask. It automatically picks up where it last left off by reading the server-side metadata of the last entry from the database and asking the user to start after that point. Since it's not tied to any Activity instance, it doesn't care about onPostExecute() or configuration changes or any of that. And you don't have to worry about single-shot execution like AsyncTask.
If there is a need to download huge amount of data in background I would use service rather then AsyncTask. There is a good presentation from Google IO about using services.
Quote from AsyncTask documentation:
If you need to keep threads running for long periods of time, it is
highly recommended you use the various APIs provided by the
java.util.concurrent pacakge such as Executor, ThreadPoolExecutor and
FutureTask.
and
The task can be executed only once (an exception will be thrown if a second execution is attempted.)
As I understand, you cannot proceed with your last AsyncTask.
Still, you can load your data partially and save amount of data read and then start new AsyncTask which will start from last saved point. From my point of view this is not the best idea to pause loading when activity goes to background and it is better to use service to finish what was started.
Have you considered using a service to attach your AsyncTask to? Seeing as a permanently running service would probably be the best solution for your task at hand. All you'd have to do then will be to check if the service is running and if your download is running (easily done using static boolean variables) then you just create a progress dialog using some state saving variable in your service (maybe a percentage of the total file size downloaded etc.) in the onCreate method of your main activity.

Activity won't start until data is pulled from MySQL server

I have an Activity that displays a text based on data pulled from MySQL server. The problem is that the Activity won't load until data is pulled, which sometimes takes some long seconds or even doesn't load at all, and in the meantime the users gets a black screen.
I tried to pass the mission of getting the data from the server to a service, but also it waits for pulling the data and only then shows the layout of the Activity.
I also tried to make an activity with fixed text and then call the Activity that pulls the data from the server, but still the program wait for the data.
Can you think on a creative solution for it? or maybe a non-creative one as well :)
you can use asynctask for this:
http://developer.android.com/reference/android/os/AsyncTask.html
or you can show a waiting dialog to user until you get your data(do it in separate thread).....
or you can implement a splash screen and there you can fetch data.....
You need to do it inside another thread. Try using AsyncTask class.
The delay is probably due to the call to fetch the data being done on the main thread, also called the UI thread. Processes which take any significant amount of time, and by that I mean even a second or two should be done in a seperate thread. Android provides a class called AsyncTask to help make threading painless.
You mention you tried a service but did you take a look at an IntentService? (Can't link it yet but it's on d.android.com.) I like using them for these kind of tasks cause they handle the threading for you (like an AsyncTask) and it separates concerns better. The IntentService then sends a broadcast message that the activity picks up indicating that the data is available or not. Store the data locally in a sqlite db or as a json/xml file.

Android Querying Web Service in Real Time

I have written an application that queries a web service I wrote (which returns JSON data). My app currently processes the web service call using an AsyncTask and updates a TableLayout with the data it receives. I want my app to regularly (every second or so) call this web service and display the data in the DB, as it is continuously being updated. How can I go about doing this without having the UI thread block?
Currently the way things work is the user presses a "go" button, and the AsyncTask displays a "loading" dialog while the request processes. I would like for them to press the go button once and have the data refresh in the layout. I'm not sure what the best way to architect this is.
I wouldn't recommend that you create a new AsyncTask every second since this is going to result in a lot of object creation and corresponding memory collection.
What you can do instead is create an AsyncTask that after each request returns from the web service updates some internal data structures and then calls publishProgress(), waits the appropriate amount of time, then makes a new request to the web service. In onPublishProgress() the code should then get the new information from the request from whatever internal structures are being used (don't forget to use a lock here to synchronize access) and refresh the UI.
You'll also want the AsyncTask to have a method or variable that the Activity can call to tell it to break out of the loop.
You can use a Handler which can initiate a new AsyncTask request after every second.

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