I've got an Android activity which grabs an RSS feed from a URL, and uses the SAX parser to stick each item from the XML into an array. This all works fine but, as expected, takes a bit of time, so I want to use AsyncActivity to do it in the background. My code is as follows:
class AddTask extends AsyncTask<Void, Item, Void> {
protected void onPreExecute() {
pDialog = ProgressDialog.show(MyActivity.this,"Please wait...", "Retrieving data ...", true);
}
protected Void doInBackground(Void... unused) {
items = parser.getItems();
for (Item it : items) {
publishProgress(it);
}
return(null);
}
protected void onProgressUpdate(Item... item) {
adapter.add(item[0]);
}
protected void onPostExecute(Void unused) {
pDialog.dismiss();
}
}
Which I call in onCreate()
with
new AddTask().execute();
The line items = parser.getItems()
works fine - items
being the arraylist containing each item from the XML. The problem I'm facing is that on starting the activity, the ProgressDialog which i create in onPreExecute()
isn't displayed until after the doInBackground()
method has finished. i.e. I get a black screen, a long pause, then a completely populated list with the items in. Why is this happening? Why isn't the UI drawing, the ProgressDialog showing, the parser getting the items and incrementally adding them to the list, then the ProgressDialog dismissing?
To start an AsyncTask the following snippet must be present in the MainActivity class : MyTask myTask = new MyTask(); myTask. execute(); In the above snippet we've used a sample classname that extends AsyncTask and execute method is used to start the background thread.
An asynchronous task is defined by a computation that runs on a background thread and whose result is published on the UI thread. An asynchronous task is defined by 3 generic types, called Params , Progress and Result , and 4 steps, called onPreExecute , doInBackground , onProgressUpdate and onPostExecute .
It will go on living until it completes. And when it completes, the AsyncTask won't update the UI of the new Activity.
We use Android AsyncTask to perform these heavy tasks in the background on a separate thread and return the results back to the UI thread in order to prevent this. As a result, the UI thread is always responsive when AsyncTask is used in an Android application.
I suspect something is blocking your UI thread after you execute the task. For example, I have seen folks do things like this:
MyTask myTask = new MyTask();
TaskParams params = new TaskParams();
myTask.execute(params);
myTask.get(5000, TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS);
The get invocation here is going to block the UI thread (which presumably is spinning off the task here...) which will prevent any UI related stuff in your task's onPreExecute() method until the task actually completes. Whoops! Hope this helps.
This works for me
@Override
protected void onPreExecute() {
dialog = new ProgressDialog(viewContacts.this);
dialog.setMessage(getString(R.string.please_wait_while_loading));
dialog.setIndeterminate(true);
dialog.setCancelable(false);
dialog.show();
}
If you love us? You can donate to us via Paypal or buy me a coffee so we can maintain and grow! Thank you!
Donate Us With