I have a WebView which I initialize with loadUrl in AsyncTask.doInBackground. I initialize it like below :
webView.post(new Runnable() {
#Override
public void run() {
webView.loadUrl(authURL);
}
});
AsyncTask is executed as last in Activity.onCreate(), the problem is that most of the time webpage does not get loaded, I see white screen. If I replace webView with handler then all is ok. What am I missing here?
Why are you doing this in doInBackground() if it needs to run on the UI thread anyway?
The difference between Hander.post() and View.post() is that Handler will run your code
on the thread the Handler instance was created on (which is not necessarily the UI thread), while View will always run it on the UI thread (because views are bound to it).
Related
I have a method invoked by onClickListener
#Override
public Object getData() {
Thread t = new Thread(new testThread());
t.start();
return false;
}
it start the new Thread well, but when I am trying to do both:
private class testThread implements Runnable{
#Override
public void run() {
OuterClass.this.myActivity.runOnUiThread(new Runnable(){ ... });
OuterClass.this.myActivity.uiHandler.post(new Runnable(){ ... });
...
nothing happens. UI hang up and no Runnable never run (I see it during careful debugging).
Why? Everything should work or even if it fail, why the UI hangs??
Please help!
SOLVED!!! The problem was in method which invokes getData (outside the scope), it never finished failing into infinite loop. Since that scheduled Runnables never started as I think. Now everything works .
AsyncTask is better. It is easier to use, you don't have to manually manage so many threads, and it keeps your code clean.
The doInBackground() method will do your lengthy task on an alternate thread. If you want to update your UI when the task is running, use the publishProgress() method, and if you want to update the UI after the work is done, use onPostExecute().
As to your question on why the UI hangs, see if you are using any method that takes very long or blocks for some reason in the runOnUiThread() method. If any code takes time, remove it from this method.
I've got this piece of code:
public void updateOptionLists() {
Log.d("UI", "Called update");
if (updating){
return;
}
updating = true;
runOnUiThread(
new Runnable() {
#Override
public void run() {
updating = false;
updateOptionList();
scrollToLastTapped();
Log.d("UI","Updating");
}
});
Log.d("UI", "Posted update");
}
What I'd expect from logcat would be something like this:
Called update
Posted update
Updating
As far as I know runOnUi should be asynchronous, right? And considering that the functions called alter the views, which takes a while, this should be running asynchronous. Right?
So I look at my logcat:
Called update
Updating
Posted update
Why does this happen? And how do I make sure this runs asynchronous?
runOnUiThread will execute your code on the main thread, which (in this example) also appears to be where it's called from. This explains the ordering of the log statements you see - all code is executing on a single thread, so is synchronous per the documentation (my emphasis):
Runs the specified action on the UI thread. If the current thread is the UI thread, then the action is executed immediately. If the current thread is not the UI thread, the action is posted to the event queue of the UI thread.
runOnUiThread is typically used to execute code on the main thread from a different (i.e. background thread). The use of this separate background thread is what will make a task asynchronous. Calling back to the UI thread at the end of that task is required if you want to modify UI with the results of your background thread calculations.
Android provides several mechanisms for doing work on a background thread and then posting back to the main thread (not all use runOnUiThread explicitly for the latter operation). Good things to read up on include Thread, Handler, AsyncTask, Service, etc.
As far as I know runOnUi should be asynchronous, right?
runOnUiThread, as the name states, runs on UI thread, which is a main thread of an application. It runs synchronously with other code running within that thread and asynchronously with code in other threads.
The word 'asynchronous' has no meaning without a context: some code can run asynchronously with other parts of the code, which means these parts of the code run in different threads. Saying that something 'should be asynchronous' makes no sense without this kind of context.
is updateOptionLists running on the UI Thread?
If this is the case, i would expect this behavior to be ok.
In a normal case you use runOnUiThread from a background thread to come again to the Ui Thread..
Because you call upadetOptionLists() on ui prosess, upadetOptionLists() and runUiThread() both run in the same thread.
To separte theam you need run content in other new thread as following
public void updateOptionLists() {
new Thread(new Runnable() {
#Override
public void run() {
Log.d("UI", "Called update");
if (updating){
return;
}
updating = true;
runOnUiThread(
new Runnable() {
#Override
public void run() {
updating = false;
updateOptionList();
scrollToLastTapped();
Log.d("UI","Updating");
}
});
Log.d("UI", "Posted update");
}
}).start();
}
For accessing the view, you must be in the UI Thread (the main one). So, runOnUiThread will be executed on it.
You must do the long work in an other thread and only call runOnUiThread for little thing like changing a color or a text but not to calculating it.
From the documentation:
Runs the specified action on the UI thread. If the current thread is the UI thread, then the action is executed immediately. If the current thread is not the UI thread, the action is posted to the event queue of the UI thread.
http://developer.android.com/reference/android/app/Activity.html#runOnUiThread(java.lang.Runnable)
Multi Threaded Programming: Theory vs Actual
Puppy Photos Explain is the Best pic.twitter.com/adFy17MTTI— Cian Ó Maidín (#Cianomaidin) 6. april 2015
But joke aside.
If you want to test how the threads work in correlation, try:
runOnUiThread(
new Runnable() {
#Override
public void run() {
updating = false;
updateOptionList();
scrollToLastTapped();
Thread.sleep(100);
Log.d("UI","Updating");
}
});
Recently, I show up a toast in user thread and got the above runtime error.
From Can't create handler inside thread that has not called Looper.prepare(), they proposed use Handler as solution. However, I saw the solution is quite lengthy and cumbersome.
My own solution is to use runOnUiThread
private void showTooDarkToastMessage()
{
((Activity) this.getContext()).runOnUiThread(new Runnable() {
#Override
public void run() {
Toast toast = Toast.makeText(getContext(), getResources().getString(R.string.toast_toodark), Toast.LENGTH_LONG);
toast.setGravity(Gravity.CENTER_VERTICAL, 0, 0);
toast.show();
}
});
}
I was wondering, is there any shortcoming of using runOnUiThread, compared to Handler?
Because you are showing a UI element (a Toast message) runOnUiThread is perfect.
A Handler will run its task on the specified thread. For instance,
protected void onCreate( Bundle savedInstanceState )
{
Handler hander = new Handler();
//Create thread, post to handler
}
would create a new Handler that would run its posts on the UI thread. calling Activiy.runOnUiThread just posts the runnable specifically to the UI thread. By default, Handlers will run on whatever thread they were created in. The above code would work identical to using runOnUiThread because the onCreate method is run on the UI thread!
Handlers would be preferred if you needed to communicate between multiple background threads.
Because mobile devices have limited resources, work run on the UI thread should be kept relatively light. Intense work done on the UI thread can cause Application Not Responding (ANR) errors and can cause the OS to kill your process.
Actually runOnUiThread() using Handler inside. So, there is no downsides to use runOnUiThread() if you want to simple post some job to do in the UI Thread.
If you are interesting in difference between Handler and runOnUiThread() you can read about it in this answer
In my Android app, I am extracting the code to update UI elements into a separate utility package for reuse. I would like my code to be proactive and update the UI differently if the current execution context is from a UI thread versus a non-UI thread.
Is it possible to programmatically determine whether the current execution is happening on the UI thread or not?
A trivial example of what I am looking to achieve is this - my app updates a lot of TextViews all the time. So, I would like to have a static utility like this:
public static void setTextOnTextView(TextView tv, CharSequence text){
tv.setText(text);
}
This obviously won't work if called from a non-UI thread. In that case I would like to force the client code to pass in a Handler as well, and post the UI operation to the handler.
Why don't you use the runOnUiThread method in Activity
It takes a runnable and either runs it straight away (if called from the UI thread), or will post it to the event queue of the UI thread.
That way you don't have to worry about if your method has been called from the UI thread or not.
When you're not sure the code is executed on the UI thread, you should do:
activity.runOnUiThread(new Runnable() {
#Override
public void run() {
// your code here
}
});
This way, whether you're on the UI thread or not, it will be executed there.
You can use the View post method.
Your code would be:
tv.post(new Runnable() {
public void run() {
tv.setText(text);
}
});
I have the following problem:
My app has a thread that updates the game state. The app needs to make a change to the state of the View object, triggered by this thread.
The documentation for View states that it should only be modified from the UI thread, and that a Handler should be used to place and handle events.
Yet, there is a function post() in View where I can post a Runnable object that will execute in the UI thread without involvement of Handler. Can I not call this function from threads other than the UI thread??
I'm confused!
Yes you can use View.post(). Internally it uses a handler to post the Runnable.
If you want to run some arbitrary code on the UI thread from a background thread, you can use Activity's runOnUiThread():
runOnUiThread(new Runnable() {
#Override
public void run() {
}
});