Question

Currently, my app starts with a menu. Once a menu item is clicked, it starts a Activity which grabs content from an online API.

The problem I am having is, once the menu item is clicked, the application waits until the http request and response is complete before it displays the activity.

My Question is, How can I have the Activity display instantly with the layout and static View. Then once the activity is loaded, then I start fetching data from an API?

Answer 1

Why run after when you can run concurrently!!

Use an AsyncTask in your onCreate()/onResume() method.

public void onCreate(Bundle b) {
    super.onCreate(b);
    setContentView(...);

    AsyncTask task = new MyTask();
    task.execute(/* optional params */);
}

In your implementation of MyTask, put your long running code (the data fetched from the http request) into the doInBackground() method. Once the doInBackground() method returns, you can update your View in onPostExecute().

Also, take a look at Painless Threading, as there is lots of helpful android threading information in there.