How to manage Loopers and Threads (thread doesn't die anymore!)

Question

I created a class extending Thread to retrieve user location through LocationManager in a non-ui thread. I implemented this as a thread because it has to be started on request and do its work just for a limited time. By the way, I had to add a Looper object in the thread, to be able to create the handler for the LocationManager (onLocationChanged).

This is the code:

public class UserLocationThread extends Thread implements LocationListener {
//...
public void run() {
    try {
        Looper.prepare();
        locationManager.requestLocationUpdates(LocationManager.NETWORK_PROVIDER, 0, 0, this);
        Looper.loop();
        Looper.myLooper().quit();
    } catch (Exception e) {
        //...
    }
}

@Override
public void onLocationChanged(Location location) {
    locationManager.removeUpdates(this);
    //...
    handler.sendMessage(msg); //this is the handler for communication with father thread
}

//...}

I would like the thread to start, receive the user location data (in this case just one time), send the data to the main thread via a message to the handler, and then die. The problem is that in my case the thread does not die anymore, once the run method ended (that should be fine, because otherwise onLocationChanged would not receive the new locations).

But in this way, assuming that thread's stop and suspend methods are deprecated, what would be a good way, in this case at least, to make a thread with a looper die?

Thanks in advance ;)

Answer 1

You can explicitly quit from Looper's loop using Handler:

private Handler mUserLocationHandler = null;
private Handler handler = null;

public class UserLocationThread extends Thread implements LocationListener {    

 public void run() {
    try {
          Looper.prepare();
        mUserLocationHandler = new Handler();
        locationManager.requestLocationUpdates(LocationManager.NETWORK_PROVIDER, 0, 0, this);
        Looper.loop();

    } catch (Exception e) {
        //...
    }
}


@Override
public void onLocationChanged(Location location) {
    locationManager.removeUpdates(this);
    //...
    handler.sendMessage(msg); 
    if(mUserLocationHandler != null){
        mUserLocationHandler.getLooper().quit();
    }
}

Answer 2

"I implemented this as a tread because it has to be started on request and do its work just for a limited time."

This sounds like a perfect reason to simply reuse the main looper. There's no need to spawn a new Thread here. If you're doing blocking work (network I/O, etc) in onLocationChanged(), at that point you could spin up an ASyncTask.

Implement LocationListener on your Activity/Service or whatever and let it use the main looper by default.

Spawning a new thread, setting it to loop, and then immediately quitting is unnecessary.

Answer 3

IntentService is good for do this job.

IntentService is a base class for Services that handle asynchronous requests (expressed as Intents) on demand. Clients send requests through startService(Intent) calls; the service is started as needed, handles each Intent in turn using a worker thread, and stops itself when it runs out of work.

Answer 4

Looper().quit(); is good, and according to specification:

Causes the loop() method to terminate without processing any more messages in the message queue.

But, if you have a task that already is under processing, and you want to stop it too, you can acquire working thread and cause it to interrupt:

@Override
public void onLocationChanged(Location location) {
    locationManager.removeUpdates(this);
    handler.sendMessage(msg); //this is the handler for communication with father thread
    if(mUserLocationHandler != null){
        mUserLocationHandler.getLooper().quit();
        mUserLocationHandler.getLooper().getThread().interrupt(); // <-- here
    }

}

This works fine with most IO, and thread locking/waiting.

Answer 5

Extend the AsyncTask class. It does all the threading and handling for you automatically.