android cancel previous http get request

Question

I want to create an autoCompleteTextview with the suggestion from the web-service. On text change I call the web service with the text entered.

public String searchpalace_Searchtext(String serchtext)  
{       
    String resultString = "";   
    try {           
        String searchtext = URLEncoder.encode(String.valueOf(serchtext), "UTF-8");              
        HttpClient Clientloc = new DefaultHttpClient();         
        String URL = baseUrl + "places?name=" + searchtext;      
        HttpGet httpget = new HttpGet(URL);
        ResponseHandler<String> responseHandler = new BasicResponseHandler();

        resultString = Clientloc.execute(httpget, responseHandler);             
    }
    catch (Exception e) {
        resultString = "";
    }     

    return resultString;
}

This function is called from the asyncTask when reach character is entered or deleted. Now when the text is entered fast the I want to cancel the pending request when the new request is arrived. How can I cancel the previous request?

Answer 1

You can go through each queued task and call the cancel() method. Check if the task was cancelled using isCancelled(). Do not trigger async tasks for every change in the text box. You can introduce a small delay to avoid unnecessary creation of AsyncTask objects.