Anroid PDF Widget - As on Date 02/22/2012

As of 02/22/2012 there is no widget/Android View available in Android SDK which could simply render/display a .pdf file in an standalone app. The alternative way one can work are:

1. If its only about viewing - Then Install a 3rd party PDF Viewer App like that of Adobe's PDF Viewer or any other similar PDF Viewing application and then from within your app with the help of Intents launch the file by giving a URI in an OnClick Listener() which essentially will look up for any applications present on the device with a capability of displaying a PDF.

Make sure to catch the exception and display appropriate message to the user, in the event when there are no PDF Viewing applications present on the device.

2. Saving PDF's locally in a standalone app - Get the PDF data in the form of bytes, store it in a persistent database and then form the pdf and launch for display(the way it has been described in the first point).

3. Or write an application similar to PDF Viewing application as one by Adobe's.

Note - iOS although has a capability of displaying a .pdf file in a webview and renders just fine. However upon launching a PDF in an Android Webview or a WebBrowser, a user ends up downloading it to the mobile device's disk space instead of displaying it. This is just how the Android Browser/Webview behaves in the case of PDF's.

Activities Lifecycle Overlap/ Coordinating activities

When one activity starts another, they both experience lifecycle transitions. The first activity pauses and stops (though, it won't stop if it's still visible in the background), while the other activity is created. In case these activities share data saved to disc or elsewhere, it's important to understand that the first activity is not completely stopped before the second one is created. Rather, the process of starting the second one overlaps with the process of stopping the first one.

The order of lifecycle callbacks is well defined, particularly when the two activities are in the same process and one is starting the other. Here's the order of operations that occur when Activity A starts Acivity B:

1. Activity A's onPause() method executes.
2. Activity B's onCreate(), onStart(), and onResume() methods execute in sequence. (Activity B now has user focus.)
3. Then, if Activity A is no longer visible on screen, its onStop() method executes.

This predictable sequence of lifecycle callbacks allows you to manage the transition of information from one activity to another. For example, if you must write to a database when the first activity stops so that the following activity can read it, then you should write to the database during onPause() instead of during onStop().

Android Runtime Concepts/Dalvik VM/Linux Kernel/ Application Fundamentals

Android is a software stack for mobile devices that includes an operating system, middleware and key applications. The Android SDK provides the tools and APIs necessary to begin developing applications on the Android platform using the Java programming language

Features

1. Application framework enabling reuse and replacement of components
2. Dalvik virtual machine optimized for mobile devices
3. Integrated browser based on the open source WebKit engine
4. Optimized graphics powered by a custom 2D graphics library; 3D graphics based on the OpenGL ES 1.0 specification (hardware acceleration optional)
5. SQLite for structured data storage
6. Media support for common audio, video, and still image formats (MPEG4, H.264, MP3, AAC, AMR, JPG, PNG, GIF)
7. GSM Telephony (hardware dependent)
8. Bluetooth, EDGE, 3G, and WiFi (hardware dependent)
9. Camera, GPS, compass, and accelerometer (hardware dependent)
10. Rich development environment including a device emulator, tools for debugging, memory and performance profiling, and a plugin for the Eclipse IDE

Libraries

Android includes a set of C/C++ libraries used by various components of the Android system. These capabilities are exposed to developers through the Android application framework. Some of the core libraries are listed below:

System C library - a BSD-derived implementation of the standard C system library (libc), tuned for embedded Linux-based devices
Media Libraries - based on PacketVideo's OpenCORE; the libraries support playback and recording of many popular audio and video formats, as well as static image files, including MPEG4, H.264, MP3, AAC, AMR, JPG, and PNG
Surface Manager - manages access to the display subsystem and seamlessly composites 2D and 3D graphic layers from multiple applications
LibWebCore - a modern web browser engine which powers both the Android browser and an embeddable web view
SGL - the underlying 2D graphics engine
3D libraries - an implementation based on OpenGL ES 1.0 APIs; the libraries use either hardware 3D acceleration (where available) or the included, highly optimized 3D software rasterizer
FreeType - bitmap and vector font rendering
SQLite - a powerful and lightweight relational database engine available to all applications

Android Runtime/Dalvik VM


Android includes a set of core libraries that provides most of the functionality available in the core libraries of the Java programming language.

Every Android application runs in its own process, with its own instance of the Dalvik virtual machine. Dalvik has been written so that a device can run multiple VMs efficiently. The Dalvik VM executes files in the Dalvik Executable (.dex) format which is optimized for minimal memory footprint. The VM is register-based, and runs classes compiled by a Java language compiler that have been transformed into the .dex format by the included "dx" tool.

The Dalvik VM relies on the Linux kernel for underlying functionality such as threading and low-level memory management.

Linux Kernel

Android relies on Linux version 2.6 for core system services such as security, memory management, process management, network stack, and driver model. The kernel also acts as an abstraction layer between the hardware and the rest of the software stack.

Application Fundamentals


Android applications are written in the Java programming language. The Android SDK tools compile the code—along with any data and resource files—into an Android package, an archive file with an .apk suffix. All the code in a single .apk file is considered to be one application and is the file that Android-powered devices use to install the application.

Once installed on a device, each Android application lives in its own security sandbox:

- The Android operating system is a multi-user Linux system in which each application is a different user.
- By default, the system assigns each application a unique Linux user ID (the ID is used only by the system and is unknown to the application). The system sets permissions for all the files in an application so that only the user ID assigned to that application can access them.
- Each process has its own virtual machine (VM), so an application's code runs in isolation from other applications.
- By default, every application runs in its own Linux process. Android starts the process when any of the application's components need to be executed, then shuts down the process when it's no longer needed or when the system must recover memory for other applications.

In this way, the Android system implements the principle of least privilege. That is, each application, by default, has access only to the components that it requires to do its work and no more. This creates a very secure environment in which an application cannot access parts of the system for which it is not given permission.

However, there are ways for an application to share data with other applications and for an application to access system services:

- It's possible to arrange for two applications to share the same Linux user ID, in which case they are able to access each other's files. To conserve system resources, applications with the same user ID can also arrange to run in the same Linux process and share the same VM (the applications must also be signed with the same certificate).
- An application can request permission to access device data such as the user's contacts, SMS messages, the mountable storage (SD card), camera, Bluetooth, and more. All application permissions must be granted by the user at install time.

That covers the basics regarding how an Android application exists within the system. The rest is:

- The core framework components that define your application.
- The manifest file in which you declare components and required device features for your application.
- Resources that are separate from the application code and allow your application to gracefully optimize its behavior for a variety of device configurations.

- Android applications are composed of one or more application components (activities, services, content providers, and broadcast receivers)
- Each component performs a different role in the overall application behavior, and each one can be activated individually (even by other applications)
- The manifest file must declare all components in the application and should also declare all application requirements, such as the minimum version of Android required and any hardware configurations required
- Non-code application resources (images, strings, layout files, etc.) should include alternatives for different device configurations (such as different strings for different languages and different layouts for different screen sizes)

Service killed by Android System, Notifications/Toasts via a Service, Stopping a Service manually

Android Service killed by system:

In a scenario where one is implementing a Service, and where that Service is required to run forever, the question comes what if the System itself destroys/kills the Service started by the app in extreme conditions - Answer to such a case is below -

The Android system will force-stop a service only when memory is low and it must recover system resources for the activity that has user focus. If the service is bound to an activity that has user focus, then it's less likely to be killed, and if the service is declared to run in the foreground (discussed later), then it will almost never be killed. Otherwise, if the service was started and is long-running, then the system will lower its position in the list of background tasks over time and the service will become highly susceptible to killing—if your service is started, then you must design it to gracefully handle restarts by the system. If the system kills your service, it restarts it as soon as resources become available again (though this also depends on the value you return from onStartCommand(), as discussed later).

The onStartCommand() method must return an integer. The integer is a value that describes how the system should continue the service in the event that the system kills it (as discussed above, the default implementation for IntentService handles this for you, though you are able to modify it). The return value from onStartCommand() must be one of the following constants:

START_NOT_STICKY
If the system kills the service after onStartCommand() returns, do not recreate the service, unless there are pending intents to deliver. This is the safest option to avoid running your service when not necessary and when your application can simply restart any unfinished jobs.

START_STICKY
If the system kills the service after onStartCommand() returns, recreate the service and call onStartCommand(), but do not redeliver the last intent. Instead, the system calls onStartCommand() with a null intent, unless there were pending intents to start the service, in which case, those intents are delivered. This is suitable for media players (or similar services) that are not executing commands, but running indefinitely and waiting for a job.

START_REDELIVER_INTENT
If the system kills the service after onStartCommand() returns, recreate the service and call onStartCommand() with the last intent that was delivered to the service. Any pending intents are delivered in turn. This is suitable for services that are actively performing a job that should be immediately resumed, such as downloading a file.

ForeGround Services:

A foreground service is a service that's considered to be something the user is actively aware of and thus not a candidate for the system to kill when low on memory. A foreground service must provide a notification for the status bar, which is placed under the "Ongoing" heading, which means that the notification cannot be dismissed unless the service is either stopped or removed from the foreground.

For example, a music player that plays music from a service should be set to run in the foreground, because the user is explicitly aware of its operation. The notification in the status bar might indicate the current song and allow the user to launch an activity to interact with the music player.

To request that your service run in the foreground, call startForeground(). This method takes two parameters: an integer that uniquely identifies the notification and the Notification for the status bar.

To remove the service from the foreground, call stopForeground(). This method takes a boolean, indicating whether to remove the status bar notification as well. This method does not stop the service. However, if you stop the service while it's still running in the foreground, then the notification is also removed.


Sending Notifications to the User

Once running, a service can notify the user of events using Toast Notifications or Status Bar Notifications.

A toast notification is a message that appears on the surface of the current window for a moment then disappears, while a status bar notification provides an icon in the status bar with a message, which the user can select in order to take an action (such as start an activity).

Usually, a status bar notification is the best technique when some background work has completed (such as a file completed downloading) and the user can now act on it. When the user selects the notification from the expanded view, the notification can start an activity (such as to view the downloaded file).

Stopping a Service manually:

A started service must manage its own lifecycle. That is, the system does not stop or destroy the service unless it must recover system memory and the service continues to run after onStartCommand() returns. So, the service must stop itself by calling stopSelf() or another component can stop it by calling stopService().

Once requested to stop with stopSelf() or stopService(), the system destroys the service as soon as possible.

However, if your service handles multiple requests to onStartCommand() concurrently, then you shouldn't stop the service when you're done processing a start request, because you might have since received a new start request (stopping at the end of the first request would terminate the second one). To avoid this problem, you can use stopSelf(int) to ensure that your request to stop the service is always based on the most recent start request. That is, when you call stopSelf(int), you pass the ID of the start request (the startId delivered to onStartCommand()) to which your stop request corresponds. Then if the service received a new start request before you were able to call stopSelf(int), then the ID will not match and the service will not stop.

Caution: It's important that your application stops its services when it's done working, to avoid wasting system resources and consuming battery power. If necessary, other components can stop the service by calling stopService(). Even if you enable binding for the service, you must always stop the service yourself if it ever received a call to onStartCommand().

Note: Although a started service is stopped by a call to either stopSelf() or stopService(), there is not a respective callback for the service (there's no onStop() callback). So, unless the service is bound to a client, the system destroys it when the service is stopped—onDestroy() is the only callback received.

Also, keep in mind that any service, no matter how it's started, can potentially allow clients to bind to it. So, a service that was initially started with onStartCommand() (by a client calling startService()) can still receive a call to onBind() (when a client calls bindService()).

Android Service v/s Thread

When to use a Service or a Worker Thread in Android:

Basics about a Service: A Service is an application component that can perform long-running operations in the background and does not provide a user interface. Another application component can start a service and it will continue to run in the background even if the user switches to another application. Additionally, a component can bind to a service to interact with it and even perform interprocess communication (IPC). For example, a service might handle network transactions, play music, perform file I/O, or interact with a content provider, all from the background.

A service can essentially take two forms:

Started:

A service is "started" when an application component (such as an activity) starts it by calling startService(). Once started, a service can run in the background indefinitely, even if the component that started it is destroyed. Usually, a started service performs a single operation and does not return a result to the caller. For example, it might download or upload a file over the network. When the operation is done, the service should stop itself.

Bound

A service is "bound" when an application component binds to it by calling bindService(). A bound service offers a client-server interface that allows components to interact with the service, send requests, get results, and even do so across processes with interprocess communication (IPC). A bound service runs only as long as another application component is bound to it. Multiple components can bind to the service at once, but when all of them unbind, the service is destroyed.
Although this documentation generally discusses these two types of services separately, your service can work both ways—it can be started (to run indefinitely) and also allow binding. It's simply a matter of whether you implement a couple callback methods: onStartCommand() to allow components to start it and onBind() to allow binding.

However an IntentService works in a different way and spawns a worker thread:(details below):

Traditionally, there are two classes you can extend to create a started service:

Service

This is the base class for all services. When you extend this class, it's important that you create a new thread in which to do all the service's work, because the service uses your application's main thread, by default, which could slow the performance of any activity your application is running.

IntentService

This is a subclass of Service that uses a worker thread to handle all start requests, one at a time. This is the best option if you don't require that your service handle multiple requests simultaneously. All you need to do is implement onHandleIntent(), which receives the intent for each start request so you can do the background work.

The following sections describe how you can implement your service using either one for these classes.

Extending the IntentService class

Because most started services don't need to handle multiple requests simultaneously (which can actually be a dangerous multi-threading scenario), it's probably best if you implement your service using the IntentService class.

The IntentService does the following:

1. Creates a default worker thread that executes all intents delivered to onStartCommand() separate from your application's main thread.

2. Creates a work queue that passes one intent at a time to your onHandleIntent() implementation, so you never have to worry about multi-threading.

3. Stops the service after all start requests have been handled, so you never have to call stopSelf().

4. Provides default implementation of onBind() that returns null.

5. Provides a default implementation of onStartCommand() that sends the intent to the work queue and then to your onHandleIntent() implementation.

All this adds up to the fact that all you need to do is implement onHandleIntent() to do the work provided by the client. (Though, you also need to provide a small constructor for the service.)

Service V/s Thread

A service is simply a component that can run in the background even when the user is not interacting with your application. Thus, you should create a service only if that is what you need.

If you need to perform work outside your main thread, but only while the user is interacting with your application, then you should probably instead create a new thread and not a service. For example, if you want to play some music, but only while your activity is running, you might create a thread in onCreate(), start running it in onStart(), then stop it in onStop(). Also consider using AsyncTask or HandlerThread, instead of the traditional Thread class.

Remember that if you do use a service, it still runs in your application's main thread by default, so you should still create a new thread within the service if it performs intensive or blocking operations.

Caution: A service runs in the main thread of its hosting process—the service does not create its own thread and does not run in a separate process (unless you specify otherwise). This means that, if your service is going to do any CPU intensive work or blocking operations (such as MP3 playback or networking), you should create a new thread within the service to do that work. By using a separate thread, you will reduce the risk of Application Not Responding (ANR) errors and the application's main thread can remain dedicated to user interaction with your activities.

Handling Runtime Changes in Android

Handling Runtime Changes:

Some device configurations can change during runtime (such as screen orientation, keyboard availability, and language). When such a change occurs, Android restarts the running Activity (onDestroy() is called, followed by onCreate()). The restart behavior is designed to help your application adapt to new configurations by automatically reloading your application with alternative resources that match the new device configuration.

To properly handle a restart, it is important that your activity restores its previous state through the normal Activity lifecycle, in which Android calls onSaveInstanceState() before it destroys your activity so that you can save data about the application state. You can then restore the state during onCreate() or onRestoreInstanceState().

To test that your application restarts itself with the application state intact, you should invoke configuration changes (such as changing the screen orientation) while performing various tasks in your application. Your application should be able to restart at any time without loss of user data or state in order to handle events such as configuration changes or when the user receives an incoming phone call and then returns to your application much later after your application process may have been destroyed. To learn how you can restore your activity state, read about the Activity lifecycle.

However, you might encounter a situation in which restarting your application and restoring significant amounts of data can be costly and create a poor user experience. In such a situation, you have two other options:

1. Retain an object during a configuration change
Allow your activity to restart when a configuration changes, but carry a stateful Object to the new instance of your activity.

2. Handle the configuration change yourself
Prevent the system from restarting your activity during certain configuration changes, but receive a callback when the configurations do change, so that you can manually update your activity as necessary.

Retaining an Object During a Configuration Change:

If restarting your activity requires that you recover large sets of data, re-establish a network connection, or perform other intensive operations, then a full restart due to a configuration change might be a slow user experience. Also, it might not be possible for you to completely restore your activity state with the Bundle that the system saves for you with the onSaveInstanceState() callback—it is not designed to carry large objects (such as bitmaps) and the data within it must be serialized then deserialized, which can consume a lot of memory and make the configuration change slow. In such a situation, you can alleviate the burden of reinitializing your activity by retaining a stateful Object when your activity is restarted due to a configuration change.

To retain an object during a runtime configuration change:

1. Override the onRetainNonConfigurationInstance() method to return the object you would like to retain.

2. When your activity is created again, call getLastNonConfigurationInstance() to recover your object.
When the Android system shuts down your activity due to a configuration change, it calls onRetainNonConfigurationInstance() between the onStop() and onDestroy() callbacks. In your implementation of onRetainNonConfigurationInstance(), you can return any Object that you need in order to efficiently restore your state after the configuration change.

A scenario in which this can be valuable is if your application loads a lot of data from the web. If the user changes the orientation of the device and the activity restarts, your application must re-fetch the data, which could be slow. What you can do instead is implement onRetainNonConfigurationInstance() to return an object carrying your data and then retrieve the data when your activity starts again with getLastNonConfigurationInstance(). For example:

@Override
public Object onRetainNonConfigurationInstance() {
    final MyDataObject data = collectMyLoadedData();
    return data;
}

Caution: While you can return any object, you should never pass an object that is tied to the Activity, such as a Drawable, an Adapter, a View or any other object that's associated with a Context. If you do, it will leak all the views and resources of the original activity instance. (Leaking resources means that your application maintains a hold on them and they cannot be garbage-collected, so lots of memory can be lost.)

Then retrieve the data when your activity starts again:

@Override
public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
    setContentView(R.layout.main);

    final MyDataObject data = (MyDataObject) getLastNonConfigurationInstance();
    if (data == null) {
        data = loadMyData();
    }
    ...
}

In this case, getLastNonConfigurationInstance() returns the data saved by onRetainNonConfigurationInstance(). If data is null (which happens when the activity starts due to any reason other than a configuration change) then this code loads the data object from the original source.

Handling the Configuration Change Yourself:

If your application doesn't need to update resources during a specific configuration change and you have a performance limitation that requires you to avoid the activity restart, then you can declare that your activity handles the configuration change itself, which prevents the system from restarting your activity.

Note: Handling the configuration change yourself can make it much more difficult to use alternative resources, because the system does not automatically apply them for you. This technique should be considered a last resort when you must avoid restarts due to a configuration change and is not recommended for most applications.

To declare that your activity handles a configuration change, edit the appropriate element in your manifest file to include the android:configChanges attribute with a value that represents the configuration you want to handle. Possible values are listed in the documentation for the android:configChanges attribute (the most commonly used values are "orientation" to prevent restarts when the screen orientation changes and "keyboardHidden" to prevent restarts when the keyboard availability changes). You can declare multiple configuration values in the attribute by separating them with a pipe | character.

For example, the following manifest code declares an activity that handles both the screen orientation change and keyboard availability change:

activity android:name=".MyActivity"
         android:configChanges="orientation|keyboardHidden"
         android:label="@string/app_name"

Now, when one of these configurations change, MyActivity does not restart. Instead, the MyActivity receives a call to onConfigurationChanged(). This method is passed a Configuration object that specifies the new device configuration. By reading fields in the Configuration, you can determine the new configuration and make appropriate changes by updating the resources used in your interface. At the time this method is called, your activity's Resources object is updated to return resources based on the new configuration, so you can easily reset elements of your UI without the system restarting your activity.

Caution: Beginning with Android 3.2 (API level 13), the "screen size" also changes when the device switches between portrait and landscape orientation. Thus, if you want to prevent runtime restarts due to orientation change when developing for API level 13 or higher (as declared by the minSdkVersion and targetSdkVersion attributes), you must include the "screenSize" value in addition to the "orientation" value. That is, you must decalare android:configChanges="orientation|screenSize". However, if your application targets API level 12 or lower, then your activity always handles this configuration change itself (this configuration change does not restart your activity, even when running on an Android 3.2 or higher device).

For example, the following onConfigurationChanged() implementation checks the current device orientation:

@Override
public void onConfigurationChanged(Configuration newConfig) {
    super.onConfigurationChanged(newConfig);

    // Checks the orientation of the screen
    if (newConfig.orientation == Configuration.ORIENTATION_LANDSCAPE) {
        Toast.makeText(this, "landscape", Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show();
    } else if (newConfig.orientation == Configuration.ORIENTATION_PORTRAIT){
        Toast.makeText(this, "portrait", Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show();
    }
}

The Configuration object represents all of the current configurations, not just the ones that have changed. Most of the time, you won't care exactly how the configuration has changed and can simply re-assign all your resources that provide alternatives to the configuration that you're handling. For example, because the Resources object is now updated, you can reset any ImageViews with setImageResource() and the appropriate resource for the new configuration is used (as described in Providing Resources).

Notice that the values from the Configuration fields are integers that are matched to specific constants from the Configuration class. For documentation about which constants to use with each field, refer to the appropriate field in the Configuration reference.

Remember: When you declare your activity to handle a configuration change, you are responsible for resetting any elements for which you provide alternatives. If you declare your activity to handle the orientation change and have images that should change between landscape and portrait, you must re-assign each resource to each element during onConfigurationChanged().

If you don't need to update your application based on these configuration changes, you can instead not implement onConfigurationChanged(). In which case, all of the resources used before the configuration change are still used and you've only avoided the restart of your activity. However, your application should always be able to shutdown and restart with its previous state intact, so you should not consider this technique an escape from retaining your state during normal activity lifecycle. Not only because there are other configuration changes that you cannot prevent from restarting your application, but also because you should handle events such as when the user leaves your application and it gets destroyed before the user returns to it.

For more about which configuration changes you can handle in your activity, see the android:configChanges documentation and the Configuration class.

AsyncTask Class Overview

AsyncTask Class Overview

AsyncTask enables proper and easy use of the UI thread. This class allows to perform background operations and publish results on the UI thread without having to manipulate threads and/or handlers.

An asynchronous task is defined by a computation that runs on a background thread and whose result is published on the UI thread. An asynchronous task is defined by 3 generic types, called Params, Progress and Result, and 4 steps, called onPreExecute, doInBackground, onProgressUpdate and onPostExecute.

Usage:

AsyncTask must be subclassed to be used. The subclass will override at least one method (doInBackground(Params...)), and most often will override a second one (onPostExecute(Result).)

Here is an example of subclassing:

private class DownloadFilesTask extends AsyncTask {
     protected Long doInBackground(URL... urls) {
         int count = urls.length;
         long totalSize = 0;
         for (int i = 0; i < count; i++) {
             totalSize += Downloader.downloadFile(urls[i]);
             publishProgress((int) ((i / (float) count) * 100));
         }
         return totalSize;
     }

     protected void onProgressUpdate(Integer... progress) {
         setProgressPercent(progress[0]);
     }

     protected void onPostExecute(Long result) {
         showDialog("Downloaded " + result + " bytes");
     }
 }

Once created, a task is executed very simply:

new DownloadFilesTask().execute(url1, url2, url3);

AsyncTask's generic types:

The three types used by an asynchronous task are the following:

1. Params, the type of the parameters sent to the task upon execution.
2. Progress, the type of the progress units published during the background computation.
3. Result, the type of the result of the background computation.

Not all types are always used by an asynchronous task. To mark a type as unused, simply use the type Void:

private class MyTask extends AsyncTask { ... }

The 4 steps:

When an asynchronous task is executed, the task goes through 4 steps:

1. onPreExecute(), invoked on the UI thread immediately after the task is executed. This step is normally used to setup the task, for instance by showing a progress bar in the user interface.

2. doInBackground(Params...), invoked on the background thread immediately after onPreExecute() finishes executing. This step is used to perform background computation that can take a long time. The parameters of the asynchronous task are passed to this step. The result of the computation must be returned by this step and will be passed back to the last step. This step can also use publishProgress(Progress...) to publish one or more units of progress. These values are published on the UI thread, in the onProgressUpdate(Progress...) step.

3. onProgressUpdate(Progress...), invoked on the UI thread after a call to publishProgress(Progress...). The timing of the execution is undefined. This method is used to display any form of progress in the user interface while the background computation is still executing. For instance, it can be used to animate a progress bar or show logs in a text field.

4. onPostExecute(Result), invoked on the UI thread after the background computation finishes. The result of the background computation is passed to this step as a parameter.

Cancelling a task:


A task can be cancelled at any time by invoking cancel(boolean). Invoking this method will cause subsequent calls to isCancelled() to return true. After invoking this method, onCancelled(Object), instead of onPostExecute(Object) will be invoked after doInBackground(Object[]) returns. To ensure that a task is cancelled as quickly as possible, you should always check the return value of isCancelled() periodically from doInBackground(Object[]), if possible (inside a loop for instance.)

Threading rules:

There are a few threading rules that must be followed for this class to work properly:

- The task instance must be created on the UI thread.
- execute(Params...) must be invoked on the UI thread.
- Do not call onPreExecute(), onPostExecute(Result), doInBackground(Params...), onProgressUpdate(Progress...) manually.
- The task can be executed only once (an exception will be thrown if a second execution is attempted.)

Memory observability:

AsyncTask guarantees that all callback calls are synchronized in such a way that the following operations are safe without explicit synchronizations.

- Set member fields in the constructor or onPreExecute(), and refer to them in doInBackground(Params...).
- Set member fields in doInBackground(Params...), and refer to them in onProgressUpdate(Progress...) and onPostExecute(Result).

Android AsyncTask & Android IPC

Using AsyncTask:

AsyncTask allows you to perform asynchronous work on your user interface. It performs the blocking operations in a worker thread and then publishes the results on the UI thread, without requiring you to handle threads and/or handlers yourself.

To use it, you must subclass AsyncTask and implement the doInBackground() callback method, which runs in a pool of background threads. To update your UI, you should implement onPostExecute(), which delivers the result from doInBackground() and runs in the UI thread, so you can safely update your UI. You can then run the task by calling execute() from the UI thread.

For example, you can implement the previous example using AsyncTask this way:

public void onClick(View v) {
    new DownloadImageTask().execute("http://example.com/image.png");
}

private class DownloadImageTask extends AsyncTask {
    /** The system calls this to perform work in a worker thread and
      * delivers it the parameters given to AsyncTask.execute() */
    protected Bitmap doInBackground(String... urls) {
        return loadImageFromNetwork(urls[0]);
    }
    
    /** The system calls this to perform work in the UI thread and delivers
      * the result from doInBackground() */
    protected void onPostExecute(Bitmap result) {
        mImageView.setImageBitmap(result);
    }
}

Now the UI is safe and the code is simpler, because it separates the work into the part that should be done on a worker thread and the part that should be done on the UI thread.

You should read the AsyncTask reference for a full understanding on how to use this class, but here is a quick overview of how it works:

- You can specify the type of the parameters, the progress values, and the final value of the task, using generics
- The method doInBackground() executes automatically on a worker thread
- onPreExecute(), onPostExecute(), and onProgressUpdate() are all invoked on the UI thread
- The value returned by doInBackground() is sent to onPostExecute()
- You can call publishProgress() at anytime in doInBackground() to execute onProgressUpdate() on the UI thread
- You can cancel the task at any time, from any thread. This is imporatnat for example if you want to provide a user to stop button which essentially stops an asynchronous task call in worker thread

Caution: Another problem you might encounter when using a worker thread is unexpected restarts in your activity due to a runtime configuration change (such as when the user changes the screen orientation), which may destroy your worker thread. To see how you can persist your task during one of these restarts and how to properly cancel the task when the activity is destroyed, see the source code for the Shelves sample application.

Thread-safe methods:

In some situations, the methods you implement might be called from more than one thread, and therefore must be written to be thread-safe.

This is primarily true for methods that can be called remotely—such as methods in a bound service. When a call on a method implemented in an IBinder originates in the same process in which the IBinder is running, the method is executed in the caller's thread. However, when the call originates in another process, the method is executed in a thread chosen from a pool of threads that the system maintains in the same process as the IBinder (it's not executed in the UI thread of the process). For example, whereas a service's onBind() method would be called from the UI thread of the service's process, methods implemented in the object that onBind() returns (for example, a subclass that implements RPC methods) would be called from threads in the pool. Because a service can have more than one client, more than one pool thread can engage the same IBinder method at the same time. IBinder methods must, therefore, be implemented to be thread-safe.

Similarly, a content provider can receive data requests that originate in other processes. Although the ContentResolver and ContentProvider classes hide the details of how the interprocess communication is managed, ContentProvider methods that respond to those requests—the methods query(), insert(), delete(), update(), and getType()—are called from a pool of threads in the content provider's process, not the UI thread for the process. Because these methods might be called from any number of threads at the same time, they too must be implemented to be thread-safe.

Interprocess Communication:

Android offers a mechanism for interprocess communication (IPC) using remote procedure calls (RPCs), in which a method is called by an activity or other application component, but executed remotely (in another process), with any result returned back to the caller. This entails decomposing a method call and its data to a level the operating system can understand, transmitting it from the local process and address space to the remote process and address space, then reassembling and reenacting the call there. Return values are then transmitted in the opposite direction. Android provides all the code to perform these IPC transactions, so you can focus on defining and implementing the RPC programming interface.

To perform IPC, your application must bind to a service, using bindService(). For more information, see the Services developer guide.

Processes & Threads in Android

Processes and Threads:

When an application component starts and the application does not have any other components running, the Android system starts a new Linux process for the application with a single thread of execution. By default, all components of the same application run in the same process and thread (called the "main" thread). If an application component starts and there already exists a process for that application (because another component from the application exists), then the component is started within that process and uses the same thread of execution. However, you can arrange for different components in your application to run in separate processes, and you can create additional threads for any process.

This document discusses how processes and threads work in an Android application.

Every application runs in its own process and all components of the application run in that process, by default.
Any slow, blocking operations in an activity should be done in a new thread, to avoid slowing down the user interface.

Processes:

By default, all components of the same application run in the same process and most applications should not change this. However, if you find that you need to control which process a certain component belongs to, you can do so in the manifest file.

The manifest entry for each type of component element—, , , and —supports an android:process attribute that can specify a process in which that component should run. You can set this attribute so that each component runs in its own process or so that some components share a process while others do not. You can also set android:process so that components of different applications run in the same process—provided that the applications share the same Linux user ID and are signed with the same certificates.

The element also supports an android:process attribute, to set a default value that applies to all components.

Android might decide to shut down a process at some point, when memory is low and required by other processes that are more immediately serving the user. Application components running in the process that's killed are consequently destroyed. A process is started again for those components when there's again work for them to do.

When deciding which processes to kill, the Android system weighs their relative importance to the user. For example, it more readily shuts down a process hosting activities that are no longer visible on screen, compared to a process hosting visible activities. The decision whether to terminate a process, therefore, depends on the state of the components running in that process. The rules used to decide which processes to terminate is discussed below.

Process lifecycle:

The Android system tries to maintain an application process for as long as possible, but eventually needs to remove old processes to reclaim memory for new or more important processes. To determine which processes to keep and which to kill, the system places each process into an "importance hierarchy" based on the components running in the process and the state of those components. Processes with the lowest importance are eliminated first, then those with the next lowest importance, and so on, as necessary to recover system resources.

There are five levels in the importance hierarchy. The following list presents the different types of processes in order of importance (the first process is most important and is killed last):

Foreground process

A process that is required for what the user is currently doing. A process is considered to be in the foreground if any of the following conditions are true:

It hosts an Activity that the user is interacting with (the Activity's onResume() method has been called).
It hosts a Service that's bound to the activity that the user is interacting with.
It hosts a Service that's running "in the foreground"—the service has called startForeground().
It hosts a Service that's executing one of its lifecycle callbacks (onCreate(), onStart(), or onDestroy()).
It hosts a BroadcastReceiver that's executing its onReceive() method.
Generally, only a few foreground processes exist at any given time. They are killed only as a last resort—if memory is so low that they cannot all continue to run. Generally, at that point, the device has reached a memory paging state, so killing some foreground processes is required to keep the user interface responsive.

Visible process

A process that doesn't have any foreground components, but still can affect what the user sees on screen. A process is considered to be visible if either of the following conditions are true:
It hosts an Activity that is not in the foreground, but is still visible to the user (its onPause() method has been called). This might occur, for example, if the foreground activity started a dialog, which allows the previous activity to be seen behind it.
It hosts a Service that's bound to a visible (or foreground) activity.
A visible process is considered extremely important and will not be killed unless doing so is required to keep all foreground processes running.

Service process

A process that is running a service that has been started with the startService() method and does not fall into either of the two higher categories. Although service processes are not directly tied to anything the user sees, they are generally doing things that the user cares about (such as playing music in the background or downloading data on the network), so the system keeps them running unless there's not enough memory to retain them along with all foreground and visible processes.

Background process

A process holding an activity that's not currently visible to the user (the activity's onStop() method has been called). These processes have no direct impact on the user experience, and the system can kill them at any time to reclaim memory for a foreground, visible, or service process. Usually there are many background processes running, so they are kept in an LRU (least recently used) list to ensure that the process with the activity that was most recently seen by the user is the last to be killed. If an activity implements its lifecycle methods correctly, and saves its current state, killing its process will not have a visible effect on the user experience, because when the user navigates back to the activity, the activity restores all of its visible state. See the Activities document for information about saving and restoring state.

Empty process

A process that doesn't hold any active application components. The only reason to keep this kind of process alive is for caching purposes, to improve startup time the next time a component needs to run in it. The system often kills these processes in order to balance overall system resources between process caches and the underlying kernel caches.
Android ranks a process at the highest level it can, based upon the importance of the components currently active in the process. For example, if a process hosts a service and a visible activity, the process is ranked as a visible process, not a service process.

In addition, a process's ranking might be increased because other processes are dependent on it—a process that is serving another process can never be ranked lower than the process it is serving. For example, if a content provider in process A is serving a client in process B, or if a service in process A is bound to a component in process B, process A is always considered at least as important as process B.

Because a process running a service is ranked higher than a process with background activities, an activity that initiates a long-running operation might do well to start a service for that operation, rather than simply create a worker thread—particularly if the operation will likely outlast the activity. For example, an activity that's uploading a picture to a web site should start a service to perform the upload so that the upload can continue in the background even if the user leaves the activity. Using a service guarantees that the operation will have at least "service process" priority, regardless of what happens to the activity. This is the same reason that broadcast receivers should employ services rather than simply put time-consuming operations in a thread.

Threads

When an application is launched, the system creates a thread of execution for the application, called "main." This thread is very important because it is in charge of dispatching events to the appropriate user interface widgets, including drawing events. It is also the thread in which your application interacts with components from the Android UI toolkit (components from the android.widget and android.view packages). As such, the main thread is also sometimes called the UI thread.

The system does not create a separate thread for each instance of a component. All components that run in the same process are instantiated in the UI thread, and system calls to each component are dispatched from that thread. Consequently, methods that respond to system callbacks (such as onKeyDown() to report user actions or a lifecycle callback method) always run in the UI thread of the process.

For instance, when the user touches a button on the screen, your app's UI thread dispatches the touch event to the widget, which in turn sets its pressed state and posts an invalidate request to the event queue. The UI thread dequeues the request and notifies the widget that it should redraw itself.

When your app performs intensive work in response to user interaction, this single thread model can yield poor performance unless you implement your application properly. Specifically, if everything is happening in the UI thread, performing long operations such as network access or database queries will block the whole UI. When the thread is blocked, no events can be dispatched, including drawing events. From the user's perspective, the application appears to hang. Even worse, if the UI thread is blocked for more than a few seconds (about 5 seconds currently) the user is presented with the infamous "application not responding" (ANR) dialog. The user might then decide to quit your application and uninstall it if they are unhappy.

Additionally, the Andoid UI toolkit is not thread-safe. So, you must not manipulate your UI from a worker thread—you must do all manipulation to your user interface from the UI thread. Thus, there are simply two rules to Android's single thread model:

- Do not block the UI thread
- Do not access the Android UI toolkit from outside the UI thread

Worker threads

Because of the single thread model described above, it's vital to the responsiveness of your application's UI that you do not block the UI thread. If you have operations to perform that are not instantaneous, you should make sure to do them in separate threads ("background" or "worker" threads).

For example, below is some code for a click listener that downloads an image from a separate thread and displays it in an ImageView:

public void onClick(View v) {
    new Thread(new Runnable() {
        public void run() {
            Bitmap b = loadImageFromNetwork("http://example.com/image.png");
            mImageView.setImageBitmap(b);
        }
    }).start();
}

At first, this seems to work fine, because it creates a new thread to handle the network operation. However, it violates the second rule of the single-threaded model: do not access the Android UI toolkit from outside the UI thread—this sample modifies the ImageView from the worker thread instead of the UI thread. This can result in undefined and unexpected behavior, which can be difficult and time-consuming to track down.

To fix this problem, Android offers several ways to access the UI thread from other threads. Here is a list of methods that can help:

- Activity.runOnUiThread(Runnable)
- View.post(Runnable)
- View.postDelayed(Runnable, long)

For example, you can fix the above code by using the View.post(Runnable) method:

public void onClick(View v) {
    new Thread(new Runnable() {
        public void run() {
            final Bitmap bitmap = loadImageFromNetwork("http://example.com/image.png");
            mImageView.post(new Runnable() {
                public void run() {
                    mImageView.setImageBitmap(bitmap);
                }
            });
        }
    }).start();
}

Now this implementation is thread-safe: the network operation is done from a separate thread while the ImageView is manipulated from the UI thread.

However, as the complexity of the operation grows, this kind of code can get complicated and difficult to maintain. To handle more complex interactions with a worker thread, you might consider using a Handler in your worker thread, to process messages delivered from the UI thread. Perhaps the best solution, though, is to extend the AsyncTask class, which simplifies the execution of worker thread tasks that need to interact with the UI.

Concepts related to threads & processes.

Concepts:

Multithreading:

Multithreading as a widespread programming and execution model allows multiple threads to exist within the context of a single process. These threads share the process's resources but are able to execute independently. The threaded programming model provides developers with a useful abstraction of concurrent execution. However, perhaps the most interesting application of the technology is when it is applied to a single process to enable parallel execution on a multiprocessor system.

This advantage of a multithreaded program allows it to operate faster on computer systems that have multiple CPUs, CPUs with multiple cores, or across a cluster of machines — because the threads of the program naturally lend themselves to truly concurrent execution. In such a case, the programmer needs to be careful to avoid race conditions, and other non-intuitive behaviors. In order for data to be correctly manipulated, threads will often need to rendezvous in time in order to process the data in the correct order. Threads may also require mutually-exclusive operations (often implemented using semaphores) in order to prevent common data from being simultaneously modified, or read while in the process of being modified. Careless use of such primitives can lead to deadlocks.

Another use of multithreading, applicable even for single-CPU systems, is the ability for an application to remain responsive to input. In a single-threaded program, if the main execution thread blocks on a long-running task, the entire application can appear to freeze. By moving such long-running tasks to a worker thread that runs concurrently with the main execution thread, it is possible for the application to remain responsive to user input while executing tasks in the background. On the other hand, in most cases multithreading is not the only way to keep a program responsive, with non-blocking I/O and/or Unix signals being available for gaining similar results

Race conditions arise in software when separate processes or threads of execution depend on some shared state. Operations upon shared states are critical sections that must be mutually exclusive in order to avoid harmful collision between processes or threads that share those states.

Address space: Address space is seperate for process but threads of a process share the same addresss space.
Data sharing(bteween threads & processes): Self Read.
Communication: Communication between processes are through signals.

Memory protection is an issue when you are in the same address space. How do you encounter it? Through memory protection register.
Memory protection is a way to control memory access rights on a computer, and is a part of most modern operating systems. The main purpose of memory protection is to prevent a process from accessing memory that has not been allocated to it. This prevents a bug within a process from affecting other processes, or the operating system itself. Memory protection for computer security includes additional techniques such as address space layout randomization and executable space protection.

Thread Safe/Thread Safety:

In computer programming, thread-safe describes a program portion or routine that can be called from multiple programming threads without unwanted interaction between the threads. (A thread is an instance of the program running on behalf of some user or process.) Thread safety is of particular importance to Java programmers, since Java is a programming language that provides built-in support for threads. By using thread-safe routines, the risk that one thread will interfere and modify data elements of another thread is eliminated by circumventing potential data race situations with coordinated access to shared data.

It is possible to ensure that a routine is thread-safe by:

Making sure that concurrent threads use synchronized algorithms that cooperate with each other.
Confining the address of a shared object to one thread whenever an unsynchronized algorithm is active..

Thread safety is a computer programming concept applicable in the context of multi-threaded programs. A piece of code is thread-safe if it only manipulates shared data structures in a manner that guarantees safe execution by multiple threads at the same time. There are various strategies for making thread-safe data structures. Thread safety is a property that allows code to run in multi-threaded environments by re-establishing some of the correspondences between the actual flow of control and the text of the program, by means of synchronization.

Synchronization and thread safety in Java:

As soon as we start using concurrent threads, we need to think about various issues that fall under the broad description of thread safety. Generally, we need to take steps to make sure that different threads don't interact in negative ways:

if one thread is operating on some data or structure, we don't want another thread to simultaneously operate on that same data/structure and corrupt the results;
when Thread A writes to a variable that Thread B accesses, we need to make sure that Thread B will actually see the value written by Thread A;
we don't want one thread to hog, take or lock for too long a resource that other threads need in order to make progress.

Synchronisation:

In computer science, synchronization refers to one of two distinct but related concepts: synchronization of processes, and synchronization of data. Process synchronization refers to the idea that multiple processes are to join up or handshake at a certain point, so as to reach an agreement or commit to a certain sequence of action. Data synchronization refers to the idea of keeping multiple copies of a dataset in coherence with one another, or to maintain data integrity. Process synchronization primitives are commonly used to implement data synchronization.

Thread or process synchronization:

Thread synchronization or serialization, strictly defined, is the application of particular mechanisms to ensure that two concurrently-executing threads or processes do not execute specific portions of a program at the same time. If one thread has begun to execute a serialized portion of the program, any other thread trying to execute this portion must wait until the first thread finishes. Synchronization is used to control access to state both in small-scale multiprocessing systems -- in multithreaded environments and multiprocessor computers -- and in distributed computers consisting of thousands of units -- in banking and database systems, in web servers, and so on.

InterThread Communication in Java

1. Reading 1
2. Reading 2
3. Reading 3

InterProcess Communication:

In computing, Inter-process communication (IPC) is a set of methods for the exchange of data among multiple threads in one or more processes. Processes may be running on one or more computers connected by a network. IPC methods are divided into methods for message passing, synchronization, shared memory, and remote procedure calls (RPC). The method of IPC used may vary based on the bandwidth and latency of communication between the threads, and the type of data being communicated.
There are several reasons for providing an environment that allows process cooperation:
Information sharing
Speedup
Modularity
Convenience
Privilege separation
IPC may also be referred to as inter-thread communication and inter-application communication.
The combination of IPC with the address space concept is the foundation for address space independence/isolation.

Main IPC methods

Method: Provided by (operating systems or other environments)

File: Most operating systems
Signal: Most operating systems; some systems, such as Windows, implement signals in only the C run-time library and provide no support for their use as an IPC method.
Socket: Most operating systems
Message queue: Most operating systems
Pipe: All POSIX systems, Windows
Named pipe: All POSIX systems, Windows
Semaphore: All POSIX systems, Windows
Shared memory: All POSIX systems, Windows
Message passing:
(shared nothing) Used in MPI paradigm, Java RMI, CORBA, MSMQ, MailSlots, others
Memory-mapped file: All POSIX systems, Windows; this method may carry race condition risk if a temporary file is used.