Question

I have an application the leans heavily on map functionality. From the first Activity I call the runOnFirstFix() method to load a lot of data from a database once the location of the user has been found, but I also want to be able to interrupt this runnable and stop it mid execution for when I switch activity or the user presses the button to stop it running.

myLocationOverlay.runOnFirstFix(new Runnable() {
            public void run() {
                mc.animateTo(myLocationOverlay.getMyLocation());
                mc.setZoom(15);
                userLatitude = myLocationOverlay.getMyLocation().getLatitudeE6();
                userLongitude = myLocationOverlay.getMyLocation().getLongitudeE6();
                userLocationAcquired = true;
                loadMapData();  //Here the method is called for heavy data retrieval    
            }
        });

How can I stop this Runnable mid execution?

Answer 1

use the handler object to handle this runnable.

define this runnable with the runnable object.

after that in handler you can start the cancel this runnable service

for e.g.

Handler handler = new Handler();

on startCommand()

handler.postDelayed(myRunnable,5000);

this will execute the run method of runnable after 5 sec

for cancel

handler.removeCallbacks(myRunnable);

and your runnable define like this way

private Runnable myRunnable = new Runnable(){
      public void run(){
          // do something here
      }
}

http://developer.android.com/reference/android/os/Handler.html

http://developer.android.com/reference/java/util/logging/Handler.html

http://www.vogella.de/articles/AndroidPerformance/article.html