getApplicationContext in AsyncTask class?

Question

I have a couple private AsyncTask methods that I'd like to break out into public external classes. In my application, I have a public class extending Application which holds some shared routines I want to access from different parts of my application. When I break out the AsyncTask class however, I'm no longer able to call getApplicationContext() to get a reference to my application library (the class does not inherit anything from Activity now). getBaseContext() will have problems as well. Should I be passing a context into the AsyncTask when it gets instantiated and build from there? Not sure if that was safe or not.

import java.util.ArrayList;
import android.os.AsyncTask;

public class DlTask extends AsyncTask
{
    long totalbytes = 0;
    long totalread = 0;
    ArrayList <String> data;

    @Override
    protected void onPreExecute ()
    {   
        AppLib lib = (AppLib) getApplicationContext();

        lib.saveStatusText ("Contacting " + lib.getServerAddress () + ":" + lib.getServerPort () + "...");
       super.onPreExecute ();
    }

      @Override
      protected Object doInBackground (Object... params)
      {
        data = lib.sendCommand (CMD_LIST);
         return true;
      }

      @Override
      protected void onPostExecute (Object result)
      {

         if (data != null)
         {
                    lib.saveStatusText (data.size () + " files found");
         }
         else
         {
            Log.d (TAG, "data is null");
            Toast.makeText (getBaseContext(), msg, Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show ();                     
         }

         super.onPostExecute(result);
      }

}

Answer 1

Should I be passing a context into the AsyncTask when it gets instantiated and build from there?

You do not have a choice, as you will be unable to get a Context by any other means.