Question

I have a service class in my Android app which uses a timer. The timer is set to run at a delay of 1min (60000ms). I want the user to be able to dynamically change this delay. Normally, in java I could just use timer.setDelay(); but Android does not have this function.

Service class so far:

public class LocalService extends Service
{
    Timer timer = new Timer(); 
    int newDelay; 

    public IBinder onBind(Intent arg0) 
    {
        return null;
    }

    public void onCreate() 
    {
        super.onCreate(); 
        startService();
    }

    private void startService()
    {     
        timer.scheduleAtFixedRate(new TimerTask()
        {
            public void run() 
            {       
                mainTask();
            }
        }, 0, 60000);
    }

    private void mainTask()
    {
        //do something
    }

    private void shutdownService()
    {
        if (timer != null) timer.cancel();
    }

    public void onDestroy() 
    {     
        super.onDestroy();
        shutdownService();
    }

    private void readNewDelay()
    {
        InputStream in = openFileInput("updateDelay");
        if(in != null)
        {
            InputStreamReader input = new InputStreamReader(in);
            BufferedReader buffreader = new BufferedReader(input);
            newDelay = Integer.parseInt(buffreader.readLine()) * 60000; //value in file is saved in minutes
        }       
        in.close(); 
    }
}

The delay I want is saved to a text file by an activity. I then want the service to read this file and update its timer delay accordingly.

Answer 1

You’ll have to destroy the timer object and create a new one.

Don’t forget that timers don’t run when the phone sleeps. A better way is to use an Alert instead of a timer.