Show progressDialog for 2 seconds while waiting for a thread to finish

Question

I have an activity in which I call a service that can take a while to complete and until that service didn't finish, the menu options that are clicked should return an error message like "data not yet ready, please try again soon" however, I want to give it a couple of seconds to finish before I throw that error and during that time, I want to show a progressdialog on the screen. here is the code that I have:

if(calculatedValue.equals(NOT_YET_CALCULATED)){
                //show progress dialog
                ProgressDialog progress = ProgressDialog.show(this, "", getResources().getString(R.string.wait), true);
                long timeStarted = System.currentTimeMillis();
                while(calculatedValue.equals(NOT_YET_CALCULATED) && System.currentTimeMillis() - timeStarted < 1500){
                    // wait for at most 1.5 seconds
                }
                progress.dismiss();
                if(calculatedValue.equals(NOT_YET_CALCULATED)){
                    //if it's still not there, there's probably a problem, show generic alert dialog
                    AlertDialog dialog = new AlertDialog.Builder(this).create();
                    dialog.setTitle(R.string.not_yet_calulated_alert_title);
                    dialog.setMessage(getResources().getString(R.string.not_yet_calulated_alert_message));
                    dialog.show();
                }else{
                    startActivity(j);
                }
            }else{
                startActivity(j);
            }

Let me explain: I check if the value exists, and if it doesn't I show a progress icon (i'm going for the circle thingy) for 1.5 seconds. If after that time it's still not there, I give up and show an error message.

The problem is that the progress thing does not show up on the screen. what am I doing wrong?

thanks, e.

Solution

figured it out, should use async task for this, here's the code:

    if(calculatedValue.equals(NOT_YET_CALCULATED)){
    //show progress dialog
    final ProgressDialog progress = ProgressDialog.show(this, "", getResources().getString(R.string.wait), true);
    AsyncTask<Void, Void, Boolean> waitForCompletion = new AsyncTask<Void, Void, Boolean>(){
        @Override
        protected Boolean doInBackground(Void... params) {
            long timeStarted = System.currentTimeMillis();
            while(calculatedValue.equals(NOT_YET_CALCULATED) && System.currentTimeMillis() - timeStarted < 1500){
                // wait for 1.5 ms
                 try {
                        Thread.sleep(100);
                    } catch (InterruptedException e) {
                        Log.e(TAG, "thread interrupted", e);
                    }
            }
            progress.dismiss();
            return calculatedValue.equals(NOT_YET_CALCULATED);
        };
        @Override
        protected void onPostExecute(Boolean result) {
        if(result == true){
            AlertDialog dialog = new AlertDialog.Builder(TodayActivity.this).create();
            dialog.setTitle(R.string.not_yet_calulated_alert_title);
            dialog.setMessage(getResources().getString(R.string.not_yet_calulated_alert_message));
            dialog.show();
        }else{
            i.putExtra(Constants.AMOUNT, Integer.parseInt(calculatedValue));
            startActivity(i);
        }
        }
    };
    waitForCompletion.execute(null, null, null);
}else{
i.putExtra(Constants.AMOUNT, Integer.parseInt(calculatedValue));
startActivity(i);
}

Comments

[ekatz]

I changed it to do that but the dialog still doesn't appear just to clarify, I'm looking for something that looks like this: image

[matsjoe]

Your code for showing the progressdialog seems to be correct. Are you running that part of code from the UI thread or another one?

[ekatz]

I'm running it on the main thread part of the "public boolean onOptionsItemSelected(MenuItem item)" method