Question

One simple question: is it possible to return a value in AsyncTask?

//AsyncTask is a member class
private class MyTask extends AsyncTask<Void, Void, Void>{

    protected Void doInBackground(Void... params) {
         //do stuff
         return null;
    }

    @Override
    protected void onPostExecute(Void result) {
        //do stuff
        //how to return a value to the calling method?
    }
}

And then within my Activity/Fragment:

// The task is started from activity
myTask.execute()
// something like this?
myvalue = myTask.getvalue() 

EDIT:
This was asked a long time ago where I wasn’t familiar with Java, now that I’m better with it, I ‘ll do a quick summary:

The point of async task is that the task is asynchronous, meaning that after you call execute() on the task, the task starts running on a thread of its own. returning a value from asynctask would be pointless because the original calling thread has already carried on doing other stuff (thus the task is asynchronous).

Think of time:
At one point of time, you started a task that will run in parallel with the main thread. When the parallel-running task completed, time has also elapsed on the main thread. The parallel task cannot go back in time to return a value to the main thread.

I was coming from C so I didn’t know much about this. But it seems that lots of people are having the same question so I thought I would clear it up a bit.

Answer 1

Why not call a method that handles the value?

public class MyClass extends Activity {

    private class myTask extends AsyncTask<Void, Void, Void> {

        //initiate vars
        public myTask() {
            super();
            //my params here
        }

        protected Void doInBackground(Void... params) {
            //do stuff
            return null;
        }

        @Override
        protected void onPostExecute(Void result) {
            //do stuff
            myMethod(myValue);
        }
    }

    private myHandledValueType myMethod(Value myValue) {
        //handle value 
        return myHandledValueType;
    }
}