I have checked the official Android documentation/guide for Looper
, Handler
and MessageQueue
. But I couldn't get it. I am new to android, and got very confused with these concepts.
A Looper
is a message handling loop: it reads and processes items from a MessageQueue
. The Looper
class is usually used in conjunction with a HandlerThread
(a subclass of Thread
).
A Handler
is a utility class that facilitates interacting with a Looper
—mainly by posting messages and Runnable
objects to the thread's MessageQueue
. When a Handler
is created, it is bound to a specific Looper
(and associated thread and message queue).
In typical usage, you create and start a HandlerThread
, then create a Handler
object (or objects) by which other threads can interact with the HandlerThread
instance. The Handler
must be created while running on the HandlerThread
, although once created there is no restriction on what threads can use the Handler
's scheduling methods (post(Runnable)
, etc.)
The main thread (a.k.a. UI thread) in an Android application is set up as a handler thread before your application instance is created.
Aside from the class docs, there's a nice discussion of all of this here.
P.S. All the classes mentioned above are in the package android.os
.