Is using AsyncTask still recommended for loading listView items in the background?

Question

Background

I\'ve heard that there are some new solutions for loading data in the background which are more recommended than AsyncTask (like loaders).

The prob

Answer 1

AsyncTask is designed to be a helper class around Thread and Handler and does not constitute a generic threading framework. AsyncTasks should ideally be used for short operations (a few seconds at the most.) If you need to keep threads running for long periods of time, it is highly recommended you use the various APIs provided by the java.util.concurrent pacakge such as Executor, ThreadPoolExecutor and FutureTask. See the http://developer.android.com/reference/android/os/AsyncTask.html for more info.

An alternative to asynctask is robospice.https://github.com/octo-online/robospice.

You can get started with robopice here. https://github.com/octo-online/robospice/wiki/Starter-Guide.

A sample of robospice at https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.octo.android.robospice.motivations&feature=search_result.

Some of the features of robospice.

1.executes asynchronously (in a background AndroidService) network requests (ex: REST requests using Spring Android).

2.is strongly typed ! You make your requests using POJOs and you get POJOs as request results.

3.enforce no constraints neither on POJOs used for requests nor on Activity classes you use in your projects.

4.caches results (in Json with both Jackson and Gson, or Xml, or flat text files, or binary files, even using ORM Lite).

5.notifies your activities (or any other context) of the result of the network request if and only if they are still alive

6.no memory leak at all, like Android Loaders, unlike Android AsyncTasks notifies your activities on their UI Thread.

7.uses a simple but robust exception handling model.