A talk on how to do stuff in Background in Android, for IIT Kharagpur students. Code used, can be found here on github: https://github.com/Sheikh-Aman/Teach/tree/master/BackgroundDemo

1. Android : Doing things in Background
Who am I ?
Aman Alam
Co-Founder,
Happily Coded Mobile Solutions,
Assistant Organizer, BlrDroid
Bangalore, IN
Happilycoded.com
@amanalam

2. What
Offloading UI Thread, doing heavy work in background thread
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3. Why
- Network on Main Thread is not allowed
- Slow UI thread makes the ANR error show up
- Nobody likes slow apps
- A bit about UI Thread
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4. Solutions
- Java Threads
- Handlers
- AsyncTask
- Service
- IntentService
- Getting Results back
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5. What to use, and when
- Java Threads : Avoid
- Handlers : very small tasks
- AsyncTask : Simple tasks related to current activity
only
- Service : Somewhat heavy, independence needed
- IntentService : Easy handling of multiple requests
One shot to kill all doesn't work
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6. Getting our hands dirty
Code Time!
- Getting results back
- Java Threads
- Handlers
- AsyncTask
- Service
- IntentService
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7. Further Reading
- Bound Services :
http://developer.android.com/guide/components/bound-services.html
- Keeping the app responsive :
http://developer.android.com/training/articles/perf-anr.html
- Working with IntentServices :
http://developer.android.com/training/run-background-service/create-service.html
- Dealing with normal Thread :
http://stackoverflow.com/a/6463591/243709
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8. Further Reading
- Background processing :
http://www.vogella.com/articles/AndroidBackgroundProcessing/article.html
- Code:
https://github.com/Sheikh-Aman/Teach/tree/master/BackgroundDemo
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9. That's All Folks!
Thank You!
Aman Alam
Contact:
Co-Founder,
aman@blrdroid.org
Happily Coded Mobile Solutions,
@amanalam
Bangalore, IN
gplus.to/SheikhAman
Happilycoded.com
www.sheikhaman.com
@amanalam