Question

I have a class that fetches data in response to button presses in the main activity. Unfortunately, I keep running into problems because this class is not an Activity or a Service. For example, without a Context I cannot translate a resource id into a string:

getString(R.string.example_string); // Doesn't work

Should I make this class into a Service and have the main Activity stop the class when it is closed? Should I pass the Context from the Activity into this class like this?

MyClass c = new MyClass(this);

Or is there some better way to handle this problem?

This issue also comes up when I try to send a Toast from this class.

Update: Erich and Janusz pointed me in the direction of the AsyncTask class which works perfectly, except that it creates a new thread and never kills that thread. This means that ever time the user presses a button, another thread is added and the old ones just sit there.

Answer 1

If you have a background action whose lifecycle is decoupled from your activity, I would use a Service. In that case, the Service will have its own Context, so you won’t need to pass it in. If, however, you need to perform a background action in response to a UI event (and optionally post the results back into the UI thread), I would recommend you use an AsyncTask.