Question

Trying to make a small countdown timer in my app but it’s not working.

Idea is to count down to a specific time. First by days and when it gets closer, by hours.

The following method is inside my Fragmentclass.java (so it’s a fragment)

@Override
    public void onViewCreated(View view, Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        // TODO Auto-generated method stub
        super.onViewCreated(view, savedInstanceState);


        Calendar cal = Calendar.getInstance();
        cal.set(2012, 8, 29, 10, 0);
        long endTime = cal.getTimeInMillis(); 
        long currentTime = System.currentTimeMillis();
        long remaining = currentTime - endTime;                 
        long seconds = remaining / 1000 % 60;               

         new CountDownTimer(seconds, 1000) {
             TextView tv = (TextView)getActivity().findViewById(R.id.introTimeLeft);
             public void onTick(long millisUntilFinished) {

                 Calendar cal = Calendar.getInstance();
                 cal.set(2012, 8, 29, 10, 0);
                long endTime = cal.getTimeInMillis(); 
                long currentTime = System.currentTimeMillis();
                long remaining = currentTime - endTime;                 
                long hours = remaining / 3600000;
                long mins = remaining / 60000 % 60;
                long seconds = remaining / 1000 % 60;
                long days = hours / 24;
                String remainingText = String.valueOf(days) + " days";

                Log.i("countdown",String.valueOf(days));
                 tv.setText("Days left: " + days);
             }

             public void onFinish() {
                 Log.i("countdown","CD Finished");
                 tv.setText("CD Finished!");
             }
          }.start();
    }

Note that the textbox value is just for testing right now, but i can’t seem to get it to display the countdown.

Also is this the best approach?

Answer 1

Here are the values of the variables if I run your code:

endTime     = 1348902045437
currentTime = 1340645325437
remaining   = -8256720000
seconds     = 0

as you see seconds == 0, and this is the reason.

Also note that the first argument in the CountDownTimer(long millisInFuture, long countDownInterval) constructor is

The number of millis in the future from the call to start() until the
countdown is done and onFinish() is called.

So a fixed code would be:

Calendar cal = Calendar.getInstance();
cal.set(2012, 8, 29, 10, 0);
long endTime = cal.getTimeInMillis(); 
long currentTime = System.currentTimeMillis();
long remaining = endTime - currentTime;

new CountDownTimer(remaining, 1000) {
...

UPDATE:

It is odd it does not update the text view. The only idea I can propose is to run update calls on the main UI thread. It should be something like this:

public void onTick(long millisUntilFinished) {
    final String days = .. // some code to generate days
    getActivity().runOnUiThread(new Runnable() {
        public void run() {
            tv.setText("Days left: " + days);
        }
    });
}

public void onFinish() {
    Log.i("countdown","CD Finished");
    getActivity().runOnUiThread(new Runnable() {
        public void run() {
            tv.setText("CD Finished!");
        }
    });
}

If this doesn’t help – then I’m out of ideas.