Handling Lengthy Operations in Google's Android, Page 2

July 30, 2008
By Chunyen Liu

Send Email »
More Articles »

Performing Lengthy Operations in Child Threads

You implement the child thread in the setRandomPointsInChildThread function. Basically, a new thread will be created and executed. Within the child thread, a function to emulate the lengthy operations is provided in setRandomPoints, which does nothing but generate a series of random points and delay the process by pausing 50 milliseconds between points. After all the points have been prepared, it will send a message within a unique ID, GUIUPDATEIDENTIFIER, defined by you. A deterministic progress dialog is initiated. The screen shot is illustrated in Figure 2.

void setRandomPoints(boolean modeThreaded) {
   int delay_in_msecs = 50;
   int npoints = 120;
   int r = 0, g = 0, b = 0;
   Random rand = new Random();

   if (!modeThreaded)
      mypd = ProgressDialog.show(TutorialOnANR.this,
         "Lengthy Calculations",
         "Please wait...", 
            false);

   mypoint = null;
   mypoint = new MyPoint[npoints];
   for (int i = 0; i < npoints; i++) {
      mypoint[i] = new MyPoint();
      mypoint[i].x = rand.nextFloat() * 320;
      mypoint[i].y = rand.nextFloat() * 240;
      r = (int)(rand.nextFloat() * 155) + 100;
      g = (int)(rand.nextFloat() * 155) + 100;
      b = (int)(rand.nextFloat() * 155) + 100;
      mypoint[i].c = 0xff000000 | (r << 16) | (g << 8) | b;
      mypoint[i].sz = (int)(rand.nextFloat() * 10) + 3

      // Update the progress dialog
      mypd.setProgress(10000 * i / npoints);

      // Emulate the lengthy operations with an intentional
      // delay here
      try {
        Thread.sleep(delay_in_msecs);
      } catch (InterruptedException e) {
      }

   }

   // Dismiss the progress dialog
   mypd.dismiss();
}

// Do lengthy operations in a child thread
private void setRandomPointsInChildThread() {

   // Start a progress dialog here
   mypd = ProgressDialog.show(TutorialOnANR.this,
      "Lengthy Calculations",
      "Please wait...",
      false);

   Thread t = new Thread() {

      public void run() {

         setRandomPoints(true);

         // Send a message to the handler
         Message message = new Message();
         message.what = TutorialOnANR.GUIUPDATEIDENTIFIER;
         TutorialOnANR.this.myGUIUpdateHandler.
            sendMessage(message);
         }
      };

   t.start();
}