Call AsyncTask From Broadcast Receiver Android

SO currently i have an AsyncTask class that runs and POST's data to my server when I click a button(which works great). What im trying to do now is handle what happens when the use

Solution 1:

Using AsyncTask in BroadcastReceiver is a bad practice.

You should use Service because Android OS may kill your process or onReceive() may run to completion before asyncTask will return result, so there is no guarantee you will get the expected result.

Solution 2:

You shouldn't use AsyncTask in Broadcast Receiver because the system can kill your process after returning from onReceive method (if there is no any active service or activity). Proof link

Official documentation recommends IntentService for such cases (see paragraph about Broadcast Receivers).

Solution 3:

The other answers are not correct according to Google's documentation. The Broadcast Receivers developer guide explicitly calls out that you can use AsyncTasks from BroadcastReceivers if you call goAsync() first and report the status to the pending result in the AsyncTask

For this reason, you should not start long running background threads from a broadcast receiver. After onReceive(), the system can kill the process at any time to reclaim memory, and in doing so, it terminates the spawned thread running in the process. To avoid this, you should either call goAsync() (if you want a little more time to process the broadcast in a background thread) or schedule a JobService from the receiver using the JobScheduler, so the system knows that the process continues to perform active work.

And later it clarifies how much time you actually get:

Calling goAsync() in your receiver's onReceive() method and passing the BroadcastReceiver.PendingResult to a background thread. This keeps the broadcast active after returning from onReceive(). However, even with this approach the system expects you to finish with the broadcast very quickly (under 10 seconds). It does allow you to move work to another thread to avoid glitching the main thread.

public class MyBroadcastReceiver extends BroadcastReceiver {
    private static final String TAG = "MyBroadcastReceiver";

    @Override
    public void onReceive(final Context context, final Intent intent) {
        final PendingResult pendingResult = goAsync();
        AsyncTask<String, Integer, String> asyncTask = new AsyncTask<String, Integer, String>() {
            @Override
            protected String doInBackground(String... params) {
                StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
                sb.append("Action: " + intent.getAction() + "\n");
                sb.append("URI: " + intent.toUri(Intent.URI_INTENT_SCHEME).toString() + "\n");
                Log.d(TAG, log);
                // Must call finish() so the BroadcastReceiver can be recycled.
                pendingResult.finish();
                return data;
            }
        };
        asyncTask.execute();
    }
}