Question

My application is starting a continously running thread which runs a while(true){}. When I reopen/reenter the application another thread is created and works concurrently with the previous. I would like a mechanism which could check whether a thread from a previous session is still running and if it does then it shouldn’t recreate it. How to achieve that?

Answer 1

In your thread create a

Boolean isRunning = false;

When your thread starts
put it in the apps shared preference like this..

  isRunning = true;
  SharedPreferences settings = getSharedPreferences("isThreadRunning", 0);
  SharedPreferences.Editor editor = settings.edit();
  editor.putBoolean("isRunning", isRunning);
  editor.commit();

Now when the thread is Finished just change it back to false.

isRunning = false;

In your activity just pull the boolean out of shared preference like this.

   SharedPreferences settings = getSharedPreferences("isThreadRunning", 0);
   boolean running = settings.getBoolean("silentMode", false); //if it doesnt exist it will automatically set to false which means the thread hasnt or isnt running

 then just test.

 if(running){
 //Do something
 }else{
 //the thread isnt running so lets start it.
 }

This is a very easy way to do it.

Hope it helps