Ideal way to cancel an executing AsyncTask

Question

I am running remote audio-file-fetching and audio file playback operations in a background thread using AsyncTask. A Cancellable progress bar is sh

Answer 1

I don't like to force interrupt my async tasks with cancel(true) unnecessarily because they may have resources to be freed, such as closing sockets or file streams, writing data to the local database etc. On the other hand, I have faced situations in which the async task refuses to finish itself part of the time, for example sometimes when the main activity is being closed and I request the async task to finish from inside the activity's onPause() method. So it's not a matter of simply calling running = false. I have to go for a mixed solution: both call running = false, then giving the async task a few milliseconds to finish, and then call either cancel(false) or cancel(true).

if (backgroundTask != null) {
    backgroundTask.requestTermination();
    try {
        Thread.sleep((int)(0.5 * 1000));
    } catch (InterruptedException e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    }
    if (backgroundTask.getStatus() != AsyncTask.Status.FINISHED) {
        backgroundTask.cancel(false);
    }
    backgroundTask = null;
}

As a side result, after doInBackground() finishes, sometimes the onCancelled() method is called, and sometimes onPostExecute(). But at least the async task termination is guaranteed.