Best way to update TextView, every minute, on the minute

Question

My problem is similar to this one, How to update a widget every minute, however I only want to update TextView of the UI. I need access to the time so unfortunately can not

Answer 1

The accepted answer does not respond specifically to the question. The OP asks for a way to receive some sort of event on time (at the system clock minute and 00 seconds).

Using a Timer is not the right way to do this. It's not only overkill, but you must resort to some tricks to make it right.

The right way to do this (ie. update a TextView showing the time as HH:mm) is to use BroadcastReceiver like this :

BroadcastReceiver _broadcastReceiver;
private final SimpleDateFormat _sdfWatchTime = new SimpleDateFormat("HH:mm");
private TextView _tvTime;

@Override
public void onStart() {
    super.onStart();
    _broadcastReceiver = new BroadcastReceiver() {
            @Override
            public void onReceive(Context ctx, Intent intent) {
                if (intent.getAction().compareTo(Intent.ACTION_TIME_TICK) == 0)
                    _tvTime.setText(_sdfWatchTime.format(new Date()));
            }
        };

    registerReceiver(_broadcastReceiver, new IntentFilter(Intent.ACTION_TIME_TICK));
}

@Override
public void onStop() {
    super.onStop();
    if (_broadcastReceiver != null)
        unregisterReceiver(_broadcastReceiver);
}

The system will send this broadcast event at the exact beginning of every minutes based on system clock. Don't forget however to initialize your TextView beforehand (to current system time) since it is likely you will pop your UI in the middle of a minute and the TextView won't be updated until the next minute happens.

Answer 2

have you tried postDelayed()

Answer 3

You can try configuring a Timer to run a TimerTask that updates your TextView every minute (see its schedule method).

Answer 4

This is what I used :

int secsUntilOnTheMinute=60-Calendar.getInstance().get(Calendar.SECOND);

timer.scheduleAtFixedRate(new TimerTask() {
    @Override
    public void run() {
        updateSendTimesHandler.sendEmptyMessage(0);
    }
}, secsUntilOnTheMinute*1000, 60000);