Question

I am new to android development. Currently i am working on an application which will take a query from user, send the query to the server and will receive an XML response in return. Then it will process the xML response using XMLparser, will extract the answer from XML response and display answer to the user. Since all this processing takes some time, i want to show a progress dialog to the user for the processing time it takes.

I have gone through some ways of doing this like i can use AsyncTask, Handler or Runnable (java) threads. But as much I have read about all these, I have got confused which one to use.
Please tell me which one is better to use for above mentioned scenario. And a simple way to implement the preferred one.

Thank You in advance.

Answer 1

I’d recommend you to use AsyncTask because it is simplier than other approaches and it suits your needs.

I think you mess a bit these three different entities:

AsyncTask runs a set of actions in a separate thread, can show progress during its work and show notification when the task is completed.

Runnable is a command that can be performed. You should run in a separate thread. Also you should develop a logic in this case how to update progress and how to notify when the task is finished.

Handler is a special class that can handle messages that are sent to the handler’s thread.