I have an application that runs a background thread which periodically performs a task. The UI thread moves through several different activities.
The tutorial I used can be found at this blog, the gist of it is the following:
- Create a class that extends Thread
public final class JSONThread extends Thread {
- Define a method in this class that adds a task to the MessageQueue, prompting executing when able.
public synchronized void enqueueJSON(final JSON.JSON task) {
However, after creating the initial object in my main activity, navigating to another activity obviously loses the Object bound to my Thread. I am no longer able to call methods on that Object (hence unable to add to queue).
I am unsure if this is caused by a wrong decision in architecture on my part or by overseeing the obvious solution. Any ideas? Note that I am trying to avoid AsyncTask for this purpose, since a pool of five threads for a simple task seems a little too much.
You need to store a Thread object as member of some other object with lifetime longer than Activity.
Two ideas for you:
a) It could be a member of Application (http://developer.android.com/reference/android/app/Application.html)
You may have problems with this, if you don’t have a Service running. There is no guarantee that your application won’t be killed (as example if any system dialog will pop up on top of your activities)
b) It could be a member of Service
(http://developer.android.com/reference/android/app/Service.html)