Question

I eventually managed to get my other post sorted; to create a way to update the GUI every second or so. So my runnable runs fine but now I’ve added a button to the GUI which is meant to stop the runnable. But how do you do it?

I’ve tried this code:

 // Button to stop the runnable
    stop = ( Button ) findViewById( R.id.stop );
    stop.setOnClickListener( new View.OnClickListener() 
    {
        @Override
        public void onClick(View v) 
        {
            handler.removeCallbacksAndMessages( timerTask.class );

        }
    });

I implement Runnable in order to use it, therefore I don’t create a new Thread manually and add a run() method to it. So how do you do it?

Thanks

Answer 1

You can’t just murderize the thread. What you’ll need to do is add a method to your Runnable object implementation that acknowledges a request to stop. That method then flips a condition that causes your Runnable.run() method to exit.

public class YourClass implements Runnable {

    private boolean keepGoing = true;

    public void run() {
        while(keepGoing) {
            // Do important work!
        }
    }

    public void stop() {
        this.keepGoing = false;
    }
}

So in your onClick(View v) implementation for your stop button, you would call yourClassInstance.stop(). That breaks the loop, the run() method ends, and the thread is cleaned up.