How to cancel a handler before time in Android code?

Question

I create 1 minute delayed timer to shutdown service if it's not completed. Looks like this:

private Handler timeoutHandler = new Handler(); 

inside onCreate()

timeoutHandler.postDelayed(new Runnable()         {             public void run()             {                 Log.d(LOG_TAG, "timeoutHandler:run");                  DBLog.InsertMessage(getApplicationContext(), "Unable to get fix in 1 minute");                 finalizeService();             }         }, 60 * 1000); 

If I get job accomplished before this 1 minute - I would like to get this delayed thing cancelled but not sure how.

Answer 1

You can't really do it with an anonymous Runnable. How about saving the Runnable to a named variable?

Runnable finalizer = new Runnable()     {         public void run()         {             Log.d(LOG_TAG, "timeoutHandler:run");              DBLog.InsertMessage(getApplicationContext(), "Unable to get fix in 1 minute");             finalizeService();         }     }; timeoutHandler.postDelayed(finalizer, 60 * 1000);  ...  // Cancel the runnable timeoutHandler.removeCallbacks(finalizer); 

Answer 2

If you don't want to keep a reference of the runnable, you could simply call:

timeoutHandler.removeCallbacksAndMessages(null); 

The official documentation says:

... If token is null, all callbacks and messages will be removed.