Question

I’ve created an AsyncTask that loads messaging history from a database and then shows it on the device screen:

private void loadHistoryFromDB(Date lastUpdateDate)
    {
    final class DBAsyncTask extends AsyncTask<Void, Void, List<XMPPMessage>>
    {
        @Override
        protected List<XMPPMessage> doInBackground(Void... arg0) 
        {
            List<XMPPMessage> messages = null;
            try 
            {
                messages = PersistenceManager.getXMPPMessagesFromDB(userInfo, 0, messagingActivity);
            }
            catch (SQLException e) 
            {
                e.printStackTrace();
            } 
            catch (LetsDatabaseException e)
            {
                e.printStackTrace();
            }
            return messages;
        }

It seems to work fine, but after being executed, it leaves 2 running threads and I can’t finish the activity because of that. How can I fix it?

Answer 1

As long as your tasks are executing properly (exits from onPostExecute), this shouldn’t be something you have to worry about. Once executed, AsyncTask thread(s) will stick around for possible reuse in the form of a thread pool or single thread, depending on platform version. This is normal behaviour – they will eventually be cleaned-up/reused.