Question

I have a class which will store a list of objects and will also populate this list from a database (via a cursor) This will happen when I instantiate the object. I want to populate the list on a separate thread and then set a flag in the class when the list is populated. Do I need to use a handler or is that only for the UI thread?

Thanks,
m

This seems to work for me:

public void pop(){
    mReadyToSearch = false;
    new Thread() {
        public void run() { final Long startTime = System.currentTimeMillis();
                            Log.i(TAG, "Start Pop");

                            populateAnimalListFromCursor();
                            mReadyToSearch = true; 

                            final Long endTime = System.currentTimeMillis() - startTime; 
                            Log.i(TAG, "End Pop : "+ Long.valueOf(endTime)  +"ms");

                            }
        }.start();
}

Seems a bit simple but it loads the list and sets the state of the class which is all I need at the minute. Can anyone see a problem with this?

Thanks, m

Answer 1

If you instantiate the object from somewhere on the UI-thread, the instantation will also be run on the UI-thread.

I suggest you add an AsyncTask (or a Runnable could do it, if you don’t need to update UI-components) as an inner class of your object to do the loading – this way it will be done from a non-UI-thread.