Ways of making async service calls in Android? and when to use which?

Question

If I want to make a request from an Android device to a remote service, I can use AsyncTask, AsyncTaskLoader, Intent, etc to make the a request apart from the UI thread. It seems there are a lot of options, but I am confused how to choose among them. Could you explain when and which to use? Also, are there any other options besides the ones I have mentioned?

Answer 1

This is an extensively discussed question, since Android provides a long list of mechanisms capable to handle service calls asynchronously, besides the one you mentioned there's also:

• IntentService
• Native Threads

Now, the key point in your question is "When to use it" and here would be my answer: In software the only golden rigid rule is the "It depends rule", there's no hard rules for anything in software development there's always different ways to approach a problem in software (i guess that's the reason of the word "soft" in it...) and that's exactly why it always depends, it depends on whatever you need and although one approach might be the most common way to do it like for example "AsyncTask" it doesn't mean at all that AsyncTaks is always the way to go, it always depends on the factors and needs that affect your functionality. There's plenty of things that nowdays get executed using AsyncTaks when maybe all you need could be just a regular common Native Thread.

The only way to be able to make a decision towards the most appropiate approach would be knowing ALL the features around a tool, like for example most people 90% of the time use AsyncTaks just to run doInbackGround on separate thread, but might not even need preExecute, publishProgress, postExecute, etc, and that's something a Regular Thread could do, just like this example there's features for every single object provided in order to do remote calls, however as i already mentioned several times, it all depends on what you need and what tool fits better your needs. Remember there's no hard coded rules for "How, When, and What" to use in software, IT ALL DEPENDS, and making good decisions in that "DEPENDS" makes the difference between good developers from excellent developers...

This is a list of things i usually take on count to implement either one way or another, this list do not apply for all the scenarios but might give you an idea.

AsyncTaks- I know is a good idea to make use of asynctaks when the functionality needs to be monitored, by monitored i mean, i need to keep track of progress during my job, like (download/task progress), because that's exactly what the AsyncTask was originally created for, it was created attached to "The Task Pattern", and if i don't need to make use of at least two methods for monitoring provided by AsyncTaks like onPreExecute,onProgressUpdate, onCancelled etc. I know there might be another way to implement it.

Native Java Threads - I know is good to make use of this tool when my task is not related to any view in android at all, and do not need to be monitored (example: removing/adding data from remote database, and the response might affect just persistence elements that will not be displayed like configuration preferences)

IntentService - When i want to do a one time task in a queueprocessor fashion way, but unliked a native thread, here i would like to have some application context in order to maybe bind an activity etc...

Regards!