How to set timer in android?

Question

Can someone give a simple example of updating a textfield every second or so?

I want to make a flying ball and need to calculate/update the ball coordinates every se

Answer 1

Because this question is still attracting a lot of users from google search(about Android timer) I would like to insert my two coins.

First of all, the Timer class will be deprecated in Java 9 (read the accepted answer).

The official suggested way is to use ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor which is more effective and features-rich that can additionally schedule commands to run after a given delay, or to execute periodically. Plus,it gives additional flexibility and capabilities of ThreadPoolExecutor.

Here is an example of using plain functionalities.

1. Create executor service:

   final ScheduledExecutorService SCHEDULER = Executors.newScheduledThreadPool(1);
   

2. Just schedule you runnable:

   final Future future = SCHEDULER.schedule(Runnable task, long delay,TimeUnit unit);
   

3. You can now use future to cancel the task or check if it is done for example:

   future.isDone();
   

Hope you will find this useful for creating a tasks in Android.

Complete example:

ScheduledExecutorService scheduler = Executors.newScheduledThreadPool(1);
Future sampleFutureTimer = scheduler.schedule(new Runnable(), 120, TimeUnit.SECONDS);
if (sampleFutureTimer.isDone()){
    // Do something which will save world.
}