Question

I have an activity that runs some ASCII control over a network port to a remote device.
Every single button push on the interface will trigger an AsyncTask to handle the communication, and (finally) works great.
However, if a user starts button mashing like a chimp on crack, the system will crash with way too many calls on the same socket, so I’ve come up with a little timer function to slow down the reaction to their excitement.

I’m wondering if somebody has come up with a better way to do this?

First off, inside the onCreate:

btn_pwrtoggle = (Button)findViewById(R.id.pwr_btn);
    btn_pwrtoggle.setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener() {           
        @Override
        public void onClick(View v) {
            if(!buttonMasher){
                if(powerstat.equals("OFF")){
                    String[] commandToSend = {"POWER","ON"} 
                }else{
                    String[] commandToSend = {"POWER","OFF"};
                }
                deviceControl(commandToSend);
                }
                startButtonMashTimer();
            }else{
                Log.w("button masher","slow down there, monkey.");
            }
        }
    });

Then, in the actual Activity:

    Timer buttonTimer;
TimerTask buttonMonitorThread;
int chimpCrackCounter;
protected void startButtonMashTimer() {
    chimpCrackCounter = 0;
    buttonTimer = new Timer();
    buttonMonitorThread = new TimerTask(){
        @Override
        public void run(){
            buttonMasher = true;
            if(chimpCrackCounter == 1){
                buttonMasher = false;
                buttonTimer.cancel();
            }
            chimpCrackCounter++;
        }
    };
    buttonTimer.schedule(buttonMonitorThread, 0, 500);
}

It seems to be working just fine, (and may help somebody having the same difficulty) but I’m open to suggestions.

Answer 1

An easy way to prevent a user from pushing a button too often is to save the time when a button was pushed, and then next time compare the last time with the current time and if the difference is too small, ignore the action.

final static long minTimeBetweenClicks = 1000;

long lastTime;
onClick(View v){
if( System.currentTimeMillis() < lastTime + minTimeBetweenClicks ) return;
//Handle the click
lastTime = System.currentTimeMillis();
}

The beauty of this is that it doesn’t require any new threads or timers, and your AsyncTasks won’t have to know about the buttons.