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androidandroid-asynctaskandroid-cursorloaderandroid-loader

What is the advantage of loaders over Asynctask in Android?

Are there any advantages of Loaders over Async task? Also, how to make loaders compatible for phones with Android froyo.

Edit:

The primary problem here is that I'm not using the native DB(SqlLite). Using the DB on development server. Obviously, I can't use CursorLoader any more. AsyncTaskLoader has no examples at all. If any, please do link.

Is it a better idea to load the data required onto the local DB and then query it using CursorLoader?

Solution

  • Yes, Loaders are more advantageous than AsyncTask as they take care of a lot of things that AsyncTask falls short of, miserably.

    1. Screen Orientation changes are difficult in AsyncTask. I used to have such a problem, till I used an Activity Control class, which I used to retain while configuration changed. I can give you some code if you want to know how. The app used to crash, though, when you changed the orientation multiples times even before the entire data loaded. The secret here is not load a lot of data with your first thread and and finish your threading tasks as soon as possible. Even if it happens in the background, Android has a shabby way of dealing with threads. You never know when one of your tasks would be killed.

    2. Even if you use a AsyncTaskLoader, makes sure that you use an Activity manager. This will help you in getting more control over the activites and AsyncTask.

    Yes, it is compatible in all the old version of Android. You need to include the support library(Most of the times, this is included by default but its always nice to double check.)