The question is how to communicate with an Android phone to a server, so that if the Activity is left and the call in the Activity was not successful to repeat the transaction once again automatically. Just now I use the AsyncTask of Android to communicate with the server:
new AsyncTask<String, Void, List<String>>() {
@Override
protected void onPreExecute(
showWaitDialog();
}
@Override
protected void onPostExecute(List<String> msgList) {
//here I put the handling after the POST ie. error and success handling
hideWaitDialog();
if (msgList.isEmpty() {
//success handling --> starting an new Activity
} else {
errorView.setText (...);
errorLayout.setVisibility (View.VISIBLE);
}
}
@Override
protected List<String> doInBackground(String... params) {
List<String> msgs = new ArrayList<String>();
try{
//for example submitting an JSONObject
JSONObject result = HttpUtils.sendHttpPost(
AppConstants.WEB_URL, jsonObject);
//error handling on the result
boolean hasErrors = JsonResult.isOk(result);
if (hasErrors) {
// adding errors to msgs list
String[] errorMessages = JsonResult.getErrorMessages (result,...);
fillList (msgs, errorMessages);
return msgs;
}
} catch (CommunicationError er) {
msgs.add (er...);
}
return msgs;
}
}
The problem with this approach is, that if I don't have a successful transmission of the data I must stay in the same Activity. Until now I show an error message to the user and he is in charge to submit by a button again the results to the server. What I'm looking for is some Activity that remains persistent in the memory which runs later in the case that the transmission wasn't made.
As an application case I use this to dynamically upload pictures for a Waypoint in a map if I pressed that waypoint. In some case it can happens that the connection to the mobile service provider isn't available (mountains, forest, far apart from antenna). Then I want to leave the map Activity and switch to the detail view of this waypoint. In the success case I put the picture into my model classes and make an serialization. If the user clicks again on the same waypoint the picture is not loaded again. In the non success case I don't want to wait that the user clicks against on the waypoint to retrieve the image. In fact I need a background task, some sort of a queue that pictures of waypoints that are already visited on couldn't be retrieved are loaded until the communication part gives back a positive result and the image can be written into the model. The next time the user is pressing the Waypoint the picture will be then present.
Are there any best practices for making such a code implementation? Is there any example around? Is there a better way of doing this?
Yes, you need to Implement Intent Service for this requirement
According to the developers website
The IntentService class provides a straightforward structure for running an operation on a single background thread.
For complete details and working source code, Go through the Android Docs