How do you use a TimerTask to run a thread?

I'm struggling to find documentation for the TimerTask function on Android. I need to run a thread at intervals using a TimerTask but have no idea how to go about this. Any advice or examples would be greatly appreciated.

Solution 1:

I have implemented something like this and it works fine:

    private Timer mTimer1;
    private TimerTask mTt1;
    private Handler mTimerHandler = new Handler();

    private void stopTimer(){
        if(mTimer1 != null){
            mTimer1.cancel();
            mTimer1.purge();
        }
    }

    private void startTimer(){
        mTimer1 = new Timer();
        mTt1 = new TimerTask() {
            public void run() {
                mTimerHandler.post(new Runnable() {
                    public void run(){
                        //TODO
                    }
                });
            }
        };

        mTimer1.schedule(mTt1, 1, 5000);
    }

Solution 2:

You use a Timer, and that automatically creates a new Thread for you when you schedule a TimerTask using any of the schedule-methods.

Example:

Timer t = new Timer();
t.schedule(myTimerTask, 1000L);

This creates a Timer running myTimerTask in a Thread belonging to that Timer once every second.