Android runOnUiThread explanation

If you already have the data "for (Parcelable currentHeadline : allHeadlines)," then why are you doing that in a separate thread?

You should poll the data in a separate thread, and when it's finished gathering it, then call your populateTables method on the UI thread:

private void populateTable() {
    runOnUiThread(new Runnable(){
        public void run() {
            //If there are stories, add them to the table
            for (Parcelable currentHeadline : allHeadlines) {
                addHeadlineToTable(currentHeadline);
            }
            try {
                dialog.dismiss();
            } catch (final Exception ex) {
                Log.i("---","Exception in thread");
            }
        }
    });
}

This should work for you

 public class MyActivity extends Activity {

    protected ProgressDialog mProgressDialog;
    /** Called when the activity is first created. */
    @Override
    public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        setContentView(R.layout.main);
        populateTable();
    }

    private void populateTable() {
        mProgressDialog = ProgressDialog.show(this, "Please wait","Long operation starts...", true);
        new Thread() {
            @Override
            public void run() {

                doLongOperation();
                try {

                    // code runs in a thread
                    runOnUiThread(new Runnable() {
                        @Override
                        public void run() {
                            mProgressDialog.dismiss();
                        }
                    });
                } catch (final Exception ex) {
                    Log.i("---","Exception in thread");
                }
            }
        }.start();

    }

    /** fake operation for testing purpose */
    protected void doLongOperation() {
        try {
            Thread.sleep(10000);
        } catch (InterruptedException e) {
        }

    }
}

Instead of creating a thread, and using runOnUIThread, this is a perfect job for ASyncTask:

• In onPreExecute, create & show the dialog.

• in doInBackground prepare the data, but don't touch the UI -- store each prepared datum in a field, then call publishProgress.

• In onProgressUpdate read the datum field & make the appropriate change/addition to the UI.

• In onPostExecute dismiss the dialog.

If you have other reasons to want a thread, or are adding UI-touching logic to an existing thread, then do a similar technique to what I describe, to run on UI thread only for brief periods, using runOnUIThread for each UI step. In this case, you will store each datum in a local final variable (or in a field of your class), and then use it within a runOnUIThread block.