Android: How can I pass parameters to AsyncTask's onPreExecute()?

I use an AsyncTask for loading operations that I implemented as an inner class.

In onPreExecute() I show a loading dialog which I then hide again in onPostExecute(). But for some of the loading operations I know in advance that they will finish very quickly so I don't want to display the loading dialog.

I wanted to indicate this by a boolean parameter that I could pass to onPreExecute() but apparently for some reason onPreExecute() doesn't take any parameters.

The obvious workaround would probably be to create a member field in my AsyncTask or in the outer class which I would have to set before every loading operation but that does not seem very elegant. Is there a better way to do this?

Solution 1:

You can override the constructor. Something like:

private class MyAsyncTask extends AsyncTask<Void, Void, Void> {

    public MyAsyncTask(boolean showLoading) {
        super();
        // do stuff
    }

    // doInBackground() et al.
}

Then, when calling the task, do something like:

new MyAsyncTask(true).execute(maybe_other_params);

Edit: this is more useful than creating member variables because it simplifies the task invocation. Compare the code above with:

MyAsyncTask task = new MyAsyncTask();
task.showLoading = false;
task.execute();

Solution 2:

1) For me that's the most simple way passing parameters to async task is like this

// To call the async task do it like this
Boolean[] myTaskParams = { true, true, true };
myAsyncTask = new myAsyncTask ().execute(myTaskParams);

Declare and use the async task like here

private class myAsyncTask extends AsyncTask<Boolean, Void, Void> {

    @Override
    protected Void doInBackground(Boolean...pParams) 
    {
        Boolean param1, param2, param3;

        //

          param1=pParams[0];    
          param2=pParams[1];
          param3=pParams[2];    
      ....
}                           

2) Passing methods to async-task In order to avoid coding the async-Task infrastructure (thread, messagenhandler, ...) multiple times you might consider to pass the methods which should be executed in your async-task as a parameter. Following example outlines this approach. In addition you might have the need to subclass the async-task to pass initialization parameters in the constructor.

 /* Generic Async Task    */
interface MyGenericMethod {
    int execute(String param);
}

protected class testtask extends AsyncTask<MyGenericMethod, Void, Void>
{
    public String mParam;                           // member variable to parameterize the function
    @Override
    protected Void doInBackground(MyGenericMethod... params) {
        //  do something here
        params[0].execute("Myparameter");
        return null;
    }       
}

// to start the asynctask do something like that
public void startAsyncTask()
{
    // 
    AsyncTask<MyGenericMethod, Void, Void>  mytest = new testtask().execute(new MyGenericMethod() {
        public int execute(String param) {
            //body
            return 1;
        }
    });     
}