Question

I just want to check if I understood well the way asynchronous Http request work on Android.
Suppose I make such a request and set a ResponseHandler<String> responseHandler to handle the response. By doing this is it possible to have the UI thread blocked waiting for the response ? The implication being that the code in the function:

public String handleResponse(HttpResponse response)

is also executed on the UI thread or is there silently spawned a thread that waits for the response and calls the handleResponse(HttpResponse response) function when the response arrives ?

Answer 1

By doing this is it possible to have
the UI thread blocked waiting for the
response ?

Calling execute() with or without a ResponseHandler will block that thread until the HTTP request has been processed. If you call execute() on the main application thread, you will block the UI. This is not a good thing — use AsyncTask to execute() on a separate thread, then use your onPostExecute() implementation to update your UI with the results of the request.