Question

I need to do some recursive tasks, say do something after every five seconds. How to achieve that? I will need to do the recursive task in the background, so I think I can go with a Started Service.

PS. What I am actually trying to do is: taking picture using camera after every five seconds, from a background service.

I found following code in the developer-guide. The method below resides in a custom class which extends Handler class:

@Override
      public void handleMessage(Message msg) {
      // Do Something
      // HOW CAN i MAKE A RECURSIVE CALL (TO SOMEHOW CALL THIS FUNCTION) AFTER 5 SECONDS?
      // Stop the service using the startId
      stopSelf(msg.arg1);
      }
  }

Can I call something like Thread.sleep(5000) just before stopSelf()? (Not making sense to me…)

Or can I call something like this.sendMessageDelayed(msgOb, 5000); ?

Thanks.

Answer 1

Ok then this is one way to do with a handler:

int counter=0;
private Handler mHandler = new Handler() {
        public void handleMessage(Message msg) {
            switch (msg.what) {
            case MSG_TAKE_PIC:
                if(counter==5) {
                    mHandler.removeMessages(MSG_UPDATE_CALLTIME);
                    break;
                }
                else {
                    //take pic here and then
                    counter++;
                    sendEmptyMessageDelayed(MSG_TAKE_PIC, 5000);
                }

            }
        }
    };

and where you want to start taking the pic just:

mHandler.sendEmptyMessageDelayed(MSG_TAKE_PIC, 5000);