Question

In a scenario where I have a UI that will be updated from a separate thread (using AsyncTask), I can define the AsyncTask as an inner class of the activity, but this has two downsides I find problematic:

1. It makes the source files very large, reducing efficiency in managing the code
2. It makes it hard to reuse the thread class

What’s a good solution? Use an inner class, but abstract everything it does to other classes? Pass a reference to the Activity to the AsyncTask? Always define the AsyncTask class as an inner class and just accept source files will be large?

Answer 1

Quite a few examples I have seen just pass a Context into the constructor of the AsyncTask.

public class BackgroundStuff extends AsyncTask<Void, Void, Void> {
    ...
    Context mContext;
    ...
    BackgroundStuff(Context context){
        super();
        this.mContext = context;
    }
    ...
}

I would be interested to hear if anyone else uses any other approaches.