I am using Handler for communicating between Current Activity and a subclass of Application.
Subclass is having a thread which processes web service calls.
Subclass may also have a ProgressDialog instance.
I want to show ProgressDialog when http call is starting and dismiss dialog when call is finished.
For this to happen, I need to access Activity from Handler. And then assign activity to Dialog using setOwnerActivity.
Is this possible? I tried and cant not get activity from Handler. The max Handler can give is Thread which sent message.
Have you tried sending the Instance of the Activity using a Message with parameter msg.obj?
Btw, I think you should be using a AsyncTask instead of riddling it with complicated code.
The application class is unaware of what activity is running.
The only thing that can be done is to let application class know about activity is by a setter method which is not recommended as it may lead to memory problems.
Related
Ok first of all android is really confusing. The scenario is I have about two runnable classes which are created from a Login View and if logged in it will create another view which will have other data and even more activities can be created from there
Now I can pass the the Login view context when creating a thread for the runnable class and edit out UI elements in them like this:
((Activity)someContext).runOnUiThread(new Runnable(){
public void run()
{
TextView txtErr = (TextView) ((Activity)someContext).findViewById(R.id.errMsg);
txtErr.setText("Some message");
}
});
But the issue is there will be more activities that will be created and the runnable class is created at the time of logging in, and I can't keep passing contexts.
Is there a better way for accessing the UI elements of different activities from different threads?
P.S: the threads which will be accessing the UI elements doesn't extend Activity and are running in a separate thread.
EDIT
I think I need to make my question more clear... I am developing a client app for a messenger... The process goes this way... User clicks on login button which creates a thread in a separate class named ClientThread for handling socket connection and keeping the connection alive till the user logs out or connection drops. The ClientThread class loops till the socket is connected and whenever some data is received the data is passed to another thread in a class named ProcessDataThread which do the parsing of data and will update the UI accordingly.
Now in a response from server if the user is logged in I want to create an activity from that class and keep a context to that activity in ProcessDataThread as I will be updating UI on further responses from server. And if login fails ProcessDataThread will display a message on the main activity saying login failed, now I was able to achieve the later by passing the context from the MainActivity to the two threads when clicked on Login like this:
global_constants.clientObject = new ClientThread(this);
global_constants.clientThread = new Thread(global_constants.clientObject);
global_constants.clientThread.start();
And then from ClientThread to ProcessDataThread
global_constants.updateConversationHandler.post(new ProcessDataThread(SharedBuff, cntxt));
But how will I create more activities from a non-activity class and do all update them or find a UI element etc...
Not sure if I understand you, but it sounds like you are trying to control the view of an activity from outside of the Activity. This sounds hacky to me. I'd let each Activity manage its own UI.
A good way of doing decoupled communication between objects is the observer pattern, aka an "event bus" or "event dispatcher" system. An example of how to do this on Android is here: http://www.therealjoshua.com/2012/03/event-dispatching-sending-messages/
Basically, the code that's generating the error should dispatch a message. The Activity can listen for this message, and then update its own UI as needed.
EDIT
Thanks for the clarification. I think the observer pattern can still help here. Basically, your data processing threads shouldn't know anything about the UI. Just have them post an event for the error, optionally with additional info on the error. If you want, your event dispatcher class could even make the actual event calls on the UI thread itself using a Runnable like you showed, so that the listener can always assume that they are being called on the UI thread, if this is important for your design. This way you don't have to pass the context to the thread at all (at least not for purposes of updating the UI) - let the worker thread just be responsible for the work, and the activity can be responsible for its own UI.
Another option you could use is an android Handler (see http://developer.android.com/reference/android/os/Handler.html)
In this case, the work is still done in another thread, but the Activity receives a handleMessage callback from the thread at the appropriate time. I haven't used this myself but from the documentation it looks like it can get the job done for what you need.
In either case IMO, the responsibility for updating the UI should lie with the Activity, not the worker thread.
I have an application with several activities, and I have a timer I start in the first activity that is presented. The problem is this:
How can I get a reference to the current activity when the timer goes off when the activity I'm currently may not be the same as the one I started the timer.
What I actually want is to have a timer traverse all my actives, show an alert dialog when it expires and the do some stuff. But because of the way android works this seems to be impossible. Does anyone has an alternative?
I've already tried:
Using an async task to access the ui thread, doesn'nt work if it is not created in the main ui thread.
Can't use a Handler, my timer is in another class
What other choice do I have?
EDIT:
I canĀ“t change any of the activities code, the timer should be decoupled enough to function when someone plugs it in the project.
Getting an instance of the current activity from the timer worker thread should work, since it would let me run stuff in the ui thread.
Implement your timer as a singleton.
Then, implement an observer pattern:
Create an interface (maybe called AlertListener) that is implemented by each Activity you want to be alerted. This interface should have a method, something like onTimerExpired(). This method should do whatever needs to be done to the activity when the timer expires.
In your timer class, also maintain a reference to the current AlertListener and a method, named something like "setCurrentActivity(AlertListener currentActivity)".
In onResume or some other method of each activity, call MyTimer.setCurrentActivity(this).
When the timer goes off, call currentActivity.onTimerExpired().
I am trying to make asynchronous service-call in my android app using AsyncTask Class, but for each and every service call in my activity i need to have a subclass in my Application which Extends AsyncTask. Can anyone Suggest me a better way of doing this???
In My Scenario Service Calls have different return-type,then i need to return an object for all service calls and typecast it according, Is there any better way of doing this ???
Is it a service you wrote? If so, you could make the service itself asynchronous so that you can make calls on it that return instantaneously and later get notified via a callback. That would remove the need for the AsyncTasks on your Activity.
If you can't change the Service, one thing you can do is have a background worker thread that's responsible for interacting with the Service, and you post messages to it from the main thread using a Handler. The worker thread uses another Handler to deliver the results back to the UI thread once each work item is finished.
See: http://developer.android.com/reference/android/os/Handler.html
"AsyncTask must be subclassed to be used." sez the droid.
Don't declare the AsyncTask as an inner class of your activity. Declare this class once in it's own scope, and you can use it from anywhere. As far as the data to pass in and out, you can make the first parameter a String or Uri and pass in the request data, and you can use an internal listener object in the AsyncTask that can be set by the activity to receive a call back when onPostExecute fires.
EDIT
I made a gist to demonstrate the simplest version of this. Using the example AsyncTask-derived class, you can reuse this one class throughout your entire app and pass it all of your endpoints and receive the result inside your activities (or anywhere else you need to make your service calls). If you need to make this more extensive, you can just change the input object from a String to some more complex data structure containing anything you need to pass to your service call (post params, http method, etc) and you can change the signature of the OnPostExecuteListener interface if you want to return structured data and not just the raw result
https://gist.github.com/80c59fb70e195ca142bb
I am a cub in android development but i am facing difficult problem now.Please try to help me.
In my app i have used onRetainNonConfigChange() to hold the object and used after activity created.
I know about handling this problem with AsynchTask thread with ProgressDialog but The same problem i can't able to handle with normal Thread and Hanlder.
I tried all the ways like make the Thread class as static and pass the parameters through on Handler class update the UI but...no use....
"How to handle screen orientation change with Normal Thread handler in android"
I think you should use AsyncTask still. Because it says in the SDK:
if your retained state is an AsyncTask you are guaranteed that its call back functions (like onPostExecute(Result)) will not be called from the call here until you execute the next instance's onCreate(Bundle).
I have a class that fetches data in response to button presses in the main activity. Unfortunately, I keep running into problems because this class is not an Activity or a Service. For example, without a Context I cannot translate a resource id into a string:
getString(R.string.example_string); // Doesn't work
Should I make this class into a Service and have the main Activity stop the class when it is closed? Should I pass the Context from the Activity into this class like this?
MyClass c = new MyClass(this);
Or is there some better way to handle this problem?
This issue also comes up when I try to send a Toast from this class.
Update: Erich and Janusz pointed me in the direction of the AsyncTask class which works perfectly, except that it creates a new thread and never kills that thread. This means that ever time the user presses a button, another thread is added and the old ones just sit there.
If you have a background action whose lifecycle is decoupled from your activity, I would use a Service. In that case, the Service will have its own Context, so you won't need to pass it in. If, however, you need to perform a background action in response to a UI event (and optionally post the results back into the UI thread), I would recommend you use an AsyncTask.
I agree with Erich, if you only have a something small like posting a change to a web backend or loading something from the phone memory to show it on screen use a Async Task. If the task will exit very "quick" (some seconds) you can make an anonymous class inside your activity. This will enable you to use a implicit reference to the outer activity inside the task and you can get your context from there.
If the task is running for a longer time you can pass down the context. If you are passing down the context try to not pass this from the activity use this.getApplicationContext() this will minimize the number of references to your activity and enable the garbage collector to clean up properly.