Android ANRs from code running in a Handler?

Question

A game I wrote some time ago has a problem with ANRs, and debugging suggests they\'re down to HTTP requests taking a long time (and thus causing the ANR).

I\'d thoug

Answer 1

Your Handler runs on the main thread. That is what causes ANR. Even if you create it in the Application, by default (no parameters given to Handler) will be created on the main thread. You have to create a Looper, with its own Thread. See here.

A Handler initialized with your own Looper, that is a viable option to solve ANR...

A more simple alternative solution can be, if you place your async network operation into an AsyncTask. A simple approach is to place the AsyncTask into your Activity. A somewhat more complex could be to create a Service (holder for non-ui related functionality), that does the communication, and cleans itself from memory, once the communication is over...

I'd use AsyncTask and place it into the Activity / fire it up from the Activity...

Finally, HERE you can find a nice tutorial on threads in android.