Question

I need to implement a service which needs to periodically carry out a short task. I have used handler with sendmessagedelayed to implement loop. It works but is there a better way?

@Override
    public boolean handleMessage(Message arg0) {
         //do something
         Message msgtx=Message.obtain();
         handler.sendMessageDelayed(msgtx, updaterate);
         return true;
    } 

Answer 1

If the task is executed, say, each X minutes or more, using a handler is OK. If the delay between task executions is bigger (hours or so), I recommend using the AlarmManager:

long now = System.currentTimeMillis();
long interval = XXX;// time in milisecs for the next execution
Intent i = new Intent();
i.setClass(this, YourService.class);
i.setAction("some_action_to_indicate_the_task");
PendingIntent pi = PendingIntent.getService(this, 0, i, 0);
AlarmManager alarmMgr = (AlarmManager) getSystemService(ALARM_SERVICE);
alarmMgr.set(AlarmManager.RTC_WAKEUP, now + interval, pi);