Question

Coming from the basic Java world I know there’s a way to spawn a thread by creating a new Runnable and passing it to a new Thread and calling start on it. Something like:

Runnable r = new Runnable() {
   @Override
   public void run(){
   }
}

new Thread( r ).start()

Now joining the Android world it seems the Android eco system provides a few other ways to spawn a thread. One of them is Activity.runOnUiThread (for having stuff done on the UI) and Handler.post( runnable ).

What I am wondering about is what’s the Android preferable way of spawning a new thread. I do see a lot cases such as:

Handler handler = new Handler()
handler.post( r )

Is there a good reason to use Handler to spawn a thread as opposed to creating a new Thread old way?

Thanks.
Yev

Answer 1

Check out the AysncTask framework. It seems like that’s how Google wants you to handle threads…although you can use standard java threading.