Android Concurrency

Write Apps for Maximum Performance and Responsiveness

“Threading and concurrency are as important in mobile as they are in large, distributed systems. This book does an excellent job of re-introducing us to the basic concepts and describing how to apply them to the Android framework. Even the most experienced Android developer should pick up at least a few tricks from these pages.”
—Dave Smith, PE, Google Developer Expert for Android

Mastering concurrency is critical to developing software with superior performance and responsiveness. This is especially true for Android, where interruptions are frequent and abrupt, and in order to be correct, programs must be aware of component and process lifecycles in addition to being thread safe.

You need a deep, Android-specific understanding of concurrency—and Android Concurrency delivers it. This guide in Addison-Wesley’s Android Deep Dive series for experienced Android developers helps you leverage today’s multi-core processors and heavily cached architectures, as well as major improvements built into Android 5 (Lollipop).

Top Android developer and consultant Blake Meike strips the magic and mystery from concurrent programming and presents intensely practical solutions for everything from inter-thread communication to network communication. Meike introduces a simple but powerful architectural framework you can use to address new issues whenever they arise, and offers expert guidance for debugging even highly complex concurrency issues.

Android Concurrency combines in-depth knowledge, proven patterns and idioms, and world-class insights for avoiding performance-killing mistakes. For serious Android developers, it will be an indispensable resource.

You will

• Gain new clarity about what concurrency really is, and how concurrent processes work
• Master best practices for writing concurrent code that’s more robust and less susceptible to weird, hard-to-diagnose errors
• Review the Java concurrency mechanisms Android’s constructs are built upon
• Shape an approach to concurrency that reflects the unique characteristics of the Android environment
• Avoid widespread misconceptions that lead Android developers into trouble
• Make the most of AsyncTask—but only when it’s the right tool for the job
• Leverage the powerful, lightweight Looper/Handler framework to support scheduled, asynchronous tasks and execute many message types
• Use the Android Service component to separate business logic from UI
• Understand the differences between started and bound services and use them effectively for intra- and inter-process communication
• Perform scheduled tasks, including tasks requiring polling and explicit scheduling
• Track down problems via static analysis, annotations, and assertions

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Understanding Concurrency
Chapter 2 Java Concurrency
Chapter 3 The Android Application Model
Chapter 4 Async Tasks And Loaders
Chapter 5 Looper/Handler
Chapter 6 Services, Processes, And Binder Ipc
Chapter 7 Periodic Tasks
Chapter 8 Concurrency Tools