Question

I’m kinda new to android development, but i’m trying to make a xml parser. I’ve been using android.sax library, following some tutos, and this works great.
One thing that is making me sceptical, is that I don’t actually launch the parser in a separate thread, I just use a handlers to communicate between my parser and my main activity.
Should I parse in a Thread ?

Here’s my main activity code :

        tv = (TextView)findViewById(R.id.tv);

    try {
        URL url = new URL("https://www.googleapis.com/shopping/search/v1/public/products?key=AAAAABBBBBCCCCDDDEEEEFFF&country=FR&restrictBy=gtin=5030999075254&alt=atom");
        XMLHandler xHandler = new XMLHandler();
        Feed feed = xHandler.parse(url.openStream());

            if(feed.getTotalResults()==0 || feed.getItems() == null || feed.getItems().isEmpty()) {
                Log.w("XMLPARSENull", "No items
            }
            else {
                tv.setText(feed.getTotalResults()+" " + feed.getItemsPerPage() + " " + feed.getStartIndex() + " " + feed.getTitle());
                Iterator<Product> it = feed.getItems().iterator();
                while(it.hasNext()) {
                    Log.w("XMLPARSEFeed",it.next().getName());

                }
            }


    } catch(Exception e) {
        // TODO Auto-generated catch block
        e.printStackTrace();
        Log.e("XMLPARSEException", "ERROR",e);
    }

Answer 1

I don’t think that it’s the parsing so much as the network operation, as any network request should not be performed in the UI thread. You can either spawn a new Thread or an AsyncTask to perform your network request. Here are some links to help:

• AsyncTask
• Painless threading
• Expensive operations
• Designing for responsiveness
• Thread documentation
• Handler documentation