Working with the Thread Class

If you need to control a thread yourself, use the Thread class (java.lang.Thread). Porting existing code might be simpler using the Thread class directly, instead of AsyncTask. The Activity class that owns the thread is responsible for managing the lifecycle of the thread. Generally speaking, the Activity includes a member variable of type Handler. Then, when the Thread is instantiated and started, the post() method of the Handler is used to communicate with the main UI thread. You can also communicate to the main UI thread using the runOnUiThread() method of the Activity class and the post() and postDelayed() methods of the View class. For example, here is a simple Activity class that performs a similar operation to the AsyncTask example shown earlier in this chapter.