CODEWITHSUNDEEP
androidrandomtime
Zairo
Zairo

Reputation: 113

How to perform an action after a Random Time Delay? - Android

So I'm making an app on "I'm not telling you"... :-)

Going to the problem :

   final ToggleButton passTog = (ToggleButton) findViewById(R.id.onoff);

passTog.setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener() {

                public void onClick(View v) {
                    init = System.currentTimeMillis();
                    handler.post(updater);
                }
            });

Up above is a normal toggle button, I previously defined a handler, using this I'm running a Runnable named updater...(For the following: "display" is a textview)

final Runnable updater = new Runnable() {
            @Override
            public void run() {
                if (passTog.isChecked()) {
                    now = System.currentTimeMillis();
                    time = now - init;
                    display.setText(time + " ms");
                    handler.postDelayed(this, 30);
                }
            }
        };

And here's the runnable... The variable time, now, init ... are time variables.

What I'm trying to do is (right now) I'm updating the textview with the milliseconds passed since the Toggle button is pressed (see the if statement)

EXPLAINATION of the above code

So, activity starts, click the toggle button, init variable gets a value of the current time... Program goes to the runnable. Now , after double checking that the button is infact in the "on" state... the system puts the current time in "now" ... and we have the time variable as the subtraction of the two. And that gets updated in the textview "display" every 30 milliseconds. In the app you can see the textview pacing as time passes. Works great.

That's that, and what I want is...

The activity starts, you press the button.. After a random time delay* say between 2-10 seconds.... The textview should then start getting updated.

We press a button, nothing seemingly happens, Then after that random delay... the textview bursts up, and starts churning out the current time starting from 1ms, that is the above runnable should run after that random time delay.

Seeing as in the matter is completely logical and not really technical- I need to somehow introduce a non-fixed time delay before the runnable does it's thing.

I think we may be able to do this in the runnable itself... we already have the "time" variable.... Why not use that in a "if" statement.... and then reset the time variable so that it seems to start from the start.

Heavy stuff, I just can't seem to get it right.

Any idea how we can do this ?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 2440

Answers (3)

Snehal Poyrekar
Snehal Poyrekar

Reputation: 735

new CountDownTimer(2000, 1000) {
                  //currently time delay is 2000 milliseconds
            @Override
            public void onFinish() {
                // TODO Auto-generated method stub
                runOnUiThread(new Runnable() {
                    @Override
                    public void run() {

                        // do your task here

                    }
                });
            }

            @Override
            public void onTick(long millisUntilFinished) {
            }
        }.start();

Upvotes: 0

Victor Odiah
Victor Odiah

Reputation: 1081

try something like: 

 Thread t= new Thread(){
        @Override
    public void run(){
            try {
                sleep(1000);
            } catch (InterruptedException e) {

            }
            finally {
                performActionHere();
            }
        }
    };

    t.start();

Upvotes: 0

damian
damian

Reputation: 2011

How about simply delaying the first post of the runnable?

public void onClick(View v) {
    init = System.currentTimeMillis();
    handler.postDelayed(updater, 2000+(new Random().nextInt(8000));
}

After min 2000ms and max 9999ms the TextView starts to update. The init time, when the button has been clicked, stays the same. If you want the init time to be the delayed one as well, try this:

public void onClick(View v) {
    init = -1;
    handler.postDelayed(updater, 2000+(new Random().nextInt(8000));
}



final Runnable updater = new Runnable() {
            @Override
            public void run() {
                if (passTog.isChecked()) {
                    if(init == -1) init = System.currentTimeInMillis();
                    now = System.currentTimeMillis();
                    time = now - init;
                    display.setText(time + " ms");
                    handler.postDelayed(this, 30);
                }
            }
        };

Is that what you wanted to achieve, or did I understandit wrong?

Upvotes: 2

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