I am using asynctask to do lengthy operations such as DB reads. I want to start a new activity and render its contents when all the asynch tasks are done. What would be the best way to achieve this?
I know that onPostExecute is used to update screen. But I dont want to update screen unless all ther ayncTasks are done
Please help
Thanks
Don't overcomplicate it: just use a counter that gets incremented in every onPostExecute. If a task finds this counter to be maxed (equal to the number of tasks you spawned), it can run the update code.
Note that you don't need locking around this counter, since onPostExecute runs in the UI thread.
Just a suggestion, You can create an array of boolean that is sized to the number of Asynctask. Each Asynctask will have an ID which is index to the boolean array. In onPostExecute or other callback, you can check if all of the entry are true. Then you know it is all done. Another way is that, you assign unique id for each one of the Asynctask, and you also have the sum of those id, when one of them is done, you subtract its id from the sum, when it reaches zero, you also know they are all done. Not perfect, just some suggestion.
Related
I know it sounds crazy that someone is using runOnUiThread inside AsyncTask. Somehow, it is working for me but I wanna know if it is an acceptable and robust approach or not. Here is the scenario:
I have an app in which after successful login, user is rendered to next screen. In this new screen, 3 different methods are loading different types of data from a web server. These methods are:
getMembersForList() : It loads the list of community members and shows it in a listview.
getProfileData() : It loads the profile of logged in user and shows his name , image etc on the screen.
getNotificationCounts : It loads the count of new notifications for the user.
I applied 3 different approaches for it :
(1) Calling all 3 methods simply in onCreate i.e. no exclusive thread is being used for any of the methods . In this case , the transition from login screen to this screen becomes very slow and black screen shows up for some time before this activity shows up.
(2) Calling getMembersForList() on UI thread and the other 2 methods on exclusive threads. In this case transition becomes fast and list shows up quickly but Notification counts and username etc. don't show up because WrongThreadException occurs saying that this thread can't touch other thread's views (TextViews for username, notification count etc. which are declared globally) . The same thing happens when I start these threads from an AsyncTask as well.
(3) Calling getMembersForList() on UI thread and then starting an AsyncTask in which the other 2 methods are being called in "runOnUiThread" inside doInBackground() method. This solves both the above issues. Now the screen transition is faster and the WrongThread exception is also not occuring.
So far the approach-(3) is working good for me but I am not sure if this is the right way to do it because runOnUiThread and AsyncTask are 2 completely opposite things. Can anyone please clear my doubts about this scenario. Thanx in advance.
Yes, use-cases like this are a big reason why the runOnUiThread() method exists in the first place. The idea is you allow your background thread(s)/AsyncTask instance(s) to run your lengthy operations in the background, and then provide a simple hook that they can use to update the interface when they have the result (or at arbitrary intervals, as different pieces of the result become available).
As long as that's what you're doing, then your usage is fine. What you want to avoid doing is performing a lengthy operation on the main thread, either directly or indirectly by passing in some lengthy operation from a background thread.
Of course you don't have to do it that way if you don't want to. You could use postExecute() instead. Or you could store the result somewhere and then use any sort of message-passing API to notify the main thread that the result is ready, and so on.
I would advice to run all the 3 calls in the asyncTask, and update the UI in the postExecute() of the AsyncTask after the background taks is complete, postExecute runs on UIthread so you need not call anything explicit to run them on UIthread.
When my app is loading data in an AsyncTask, it shows a splash screen. Sometimes this data loading takes under a second and sometimes it takes much longer. However I want to ensure that the splash is up for at least 2 seconds if the data loading finished first, or otherwise wait until the data was done.
My first solution was to use a Countdown Timer, and two boolean values. When the processes would start, their booleans would be set to true. When the process was done, it would set it's boolean false. Then it would check if the other's boolean was false, and if it was dismiss the splash.
While this works, I feel like it is overly complicated and was hoping to find a more efficient or better solution.
I want to ensure that the splash is up for at least 2 seconds if the
data loading finished first, or otherwise wait until the data was
done.
You can asyncronously start a Thread(Splash) and AsyncTask for Loading data and call the new Activity on onPostExecute() of you AsyncTask.
Could you not use System.getCurrentTime(); To accomplish this?
At the start of the AsyncTask, call that method and store the result.
then, when the task finishes, call the method again and calculate the difference in the time values. If its not greater than 2000 milliseconds, have a while loop that continually requests the system time and compare the values until its equal to or greater than 2 milliseconds.
So, I'm working on a barcode decoder, which once we have the barcode goes to multiples API over the internet to decode what was just scanned.
The thing is that I have to link some XML parsing together, and I don't know if I'm doing it right.
So, once the barcode is scanned, my program calls an ASyncTask which goes over an API to retrieve the product name. Once it has the name, I want it to call another ASyncTask. I know this is possible by instantiating an ASyncTaks in the onPostExecute() of the other but, I think this is wrong, because it's like boxes within boxes.
So isn't it possible/better to instantiate my second ASyncTask inside my main Activity, and make it wait until my first ASyncTask is finished ?
(english isn't my primary language, I hope I made myself clear).
I think it's absolutely legitimate to start the second AsyncTask in the onPostExecute of the first AsyncTask, Mixing both operations is a bad logical idea, As "The Offspring" said - "You've gotta keep 'em separated"
If you don't want it to be directly inside the onPostExecute itself, set a handler to execute it in the activity and call this handler from onPostExecute.
And last thing - If you have a lot of logic - move it to a separate file, don't keep it all at the same file.
In situations like this it might be better to batch long running operations together in one AsyncTask.
Another option is to use the Loaders API, this makes chaining tasks much easier http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/fundamentals/loaders.html
You can go for another approach if you are facing often a situation like this. That is to merge requests and operations inside of runnables/callables and to manage them separately within say a queue for instance.
Here is a nice approach.
http://ugiagonzalez.com/2012/07/02/theres-life-after-asynctasks-in-android/
I have an activity that displays a number. The number is obtained from SharedPreferences e.g
int num=pref.getInt(myAsyncTask.MYNUMBER,0);
The SharedPreference is loaded inside an AsyncTask where calculations take place (that involve retrieving data from db and so on). So, OnCreate() of the activity I run the Asynctask to calculate the value. However, the value is not always updated to the latest one when I launch the activity. This might be because Asynctask takes more time to calculate the new value than the the action of displaying the value inside the activity. How can I delay the execution of the method displaying the value until the Asynctask finishes with the process of the new one?
[[EDIT]]
I removed sharedpreferences. I use the onPostExecute() method to get the result. However, the behaviour is similar. The result is returned after the value is displayed so i couldn't see anything at all.
If the calculation doesn't take more than few second, the simplest solution is to use AsyncTask.get(), this method will block UI thread execution and make UI thread waiting for AsyncTask to finish:
public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
... ...
MyAsyncTask myAsyncTask = nee MyAsyncTask();
myAsyncTask.execute();
myAsyncTask.get(); // alternatively you can use AsyncTask.(long timeout, TimeUnit unit)
... ...
}
Bear in mind that it blocks UI thrread execution, if your calculation is longer than 5 seconds, you will probably get ANR exception.
Since you already use AsyncTask, a more reasonable solution is moving execution of the method displaying the value into AsyncTask.onPostExecute(), this is the exactly reason why AsyncTask exist in API to solve this kind if scenario.
Just use listener concept, or just 'pass' your Activity to your asynctask so It can call the main thread.
If the value is not showing as correct at the time you launch the activity you should set the visibility of the View to View.GONE so it doesn't appear, then change the visibility back to visible when you have the result. To update the value you could implement a listener on your activity that gets called by the AsyncTask.
If its going to take a significant time (more than a few seconds) you might want to also use a progress dialog so the user understands that they need to wait.
I'm currently using an AsyncTask to make an API call and populate a list with data.
I have a Sub Menu whose items can call the AsyncTask to populate the data, problem is that if i click quickly i end up with merged results obviously cause the AsyncTask is running at the same time as each other.
What is the best way to handle a situation like this? Sorry if this is a amateur question.
I would use a ProgressDialog to show that content is being updated, and when the update is complete, dismiss() the dialog. While this is happening, you should make sure that you are not accepting touch input on your ListView. (this may happen by default when the ProgressDialog is in front, I am not remembering currently...)
Take a look at this link for an example.
You could configure only a single Asynch task to run at a time.
A boolean variable which is set to true as soon as the asynch task starts and set to false as soon as it finishes.
Next call could wait for this to be set to false. You could also rate limit what is the min time after which only making the API call makes sense.