Question

I’m writing a Hangman app for android and I encounter some loading problems.
When my app starts, I generate a random word picked from a txt file. The problem is that this file is heavy: it has almost 360’000 words (4000 kB), therefore picking a single word takes between 10 and 20 secs time, I know that it is because I read the file and pick a word each time I click on Generate.

Would it be a good thing if I read the file once the app starts and put its contents into a String Array? I don’t really know if an array can handle this much.
Otherwise what would be the good pattern?

Thanks for reading.

Answer 1

Execute the code to parse/load content form json/db in a AsyncTask for more speed. I load 5000 rows with ~ 400 chars per row. It takes without AsyncTask much longer.

    private class YourTask extends AsyncTask<String, Void, String> {
        @Override
        protected String doInBackground(String... s) {

            //Here you have to make the loading / parsing tasks
            //Don't call any UI actions here. For example a Toast.show() this will couse Exceptions
            // UI stuff you have to make in onPostExecute method

        }

        @Override
        protected void onPreExecute() {
            // This method will called during doInBackground is in process
            // Here you can for example show a ProgressDialog
        }

        @Override
        protected void onPostExecute(Long result) {
            // onPostExecute is called when doInBackground finished
            // Here you can for example fill your Listview with the content loaded in doInBackground method

        }

}

To execute you just have to call:

new YourTask().execute("");

Here you can learn more about AsyncTasks:

AsyncTask developer Guide