How to start and stop the download of multiple files in android

Question

i've an activity with a button and a label. On button click my app must download several files ( about 9000 ). If user clicks again on button, the download must stop and on another click it must start from the beginning.

So this is what i do:

In activity:

    file.setOnClickListener(new OnClickListener() {
        @Override
        public void onClick(View v) {
            Button b = (Button)v;
            if(canFile){
                b.setText("Stop download");
                changeLabelInfo("Getting file list...");
                labelFile.setVisibility(View.VISIBLE);
                fileTask.start();
            }else{
                b.setText("Download files");
                if(fileTask.isAlive()){  
                   fileTask.interrupt();
                   fileTask = null;
                   fileTask = new UpdateFilesThread(this);
                }
                labelFile.setVisibility(View.INVISIBLE);
                Kernel.setManualUpdate("file",false);
            }
            canFile = !canFile;
        }
    });

The thread that must download files is UpdateFilesThread :

public class UpdateFilesThread extends Thread{
    private MainActivity activity;
    private final String rootPath = "/mnt/local/";
    public UpdateFilesThread(MainActivity activity){
        this.activity = activity;
    }


    public void run(){
        String json = getFilesURL();
        JSONObject a = (JSONObject)JSONValue.parse(json);
        boolean isZip = false,canDownload = true;
        String[] keys = new String[]{"key1","key2","key3","key4"};

        for(String key:keys){
            Object folder = (Object)a.get(key);
            if(folder instanceof JSONObject){
                JSONObject fold = (JSONObject)folder;
                for(Object path_o:fold.keySet()){
                    path = path_o.toString().replace(" ", "%20");
                    if(local.endsWith(".php")){
                        isZip = true;
                        try {
                            Jsoup.connect(mywebserviceURL).data("path",path).timeout(0).post(); // If php generate zip containing php file
                        } catch (IOException e) {
                            canDownload = false;
                        }
                    }
                    if(canDownload){
                        try{
                            if(downloadFromUrl(path,isZip))
                                //SAVE URL DOWNLOADED
                        }catch(Exception e){
                            e.printStackTrace();
                        }
                    }
                    canDownload = true;
                    isZip = false;
                }
            }
        }
        a.remove(key);
    }

    private String getFilesURL(){
        try {

            MultipartEntity entity = new MultipartEntity(HttpMultipartMode.BROWSER_COMPATIBLE);
            entity.addPart("type", new StringBody("all"));
            HttpPost post = new HttpPost("mywebserviceURL");
            post.setEntity(entity);
            HttpClient client = new DefaultHttpClient();
            HttpResponse response = client.execute(post);

            return EntityUtils.toString(response.getEntity());
        } catch (UnsupportedEncodingException e) {
            Support.writeError(e, null);
            e.printStackTrace();
            return "";
        } catch (ClientProtocolException e) {
            Support.writeError(e, null);
            e.printStackTrace();
            return "";
        } catch (ParseException e) {
            Support.writeError(e, null);
            e.printStackTrace();
            return "";
        } catch (IOException e) {
            Support.writeError(e, null);
            e.printStackTrace();
            return "";
        }
    }
    public boolean downloadFromUrl(String path,boolean isZip){
        InputStream is = null;
        FileOutputStream fos = null;
        String localFilename = rootPath+path;
        String local = isZip?rootPath+"tmp.zip":localFilename;


        boolean return_ = false;
        try {
            URL url = new URL(isZip?mywebserviceURLZip:mywebserviceURLZip+path);
            URLConnection urlConn = url.openConnection();
            urlConn.setReadTimeout(0);
            is = urlConn.getInputStream();
            fos = new FileOutputStream(local);

            byte[] buffer = new byte[51200];
            int len;

            while ((len = is.read(buffer)) > 0) {
                fos.write(buffer, 0, len);
            }
            fos.close();
            is.close();
            if(isZip){
                ZipFile zip = new ZipFile(local);
                zip.extractAll(rootPath);
                new File(local).delete();
            }

            return_= true;
        }catch(Exception e){
            e.printStackTrace();
            return false;
        }
        return return_;
    }
}

My problem borns when user clicks two time the button ( stop downloading and start again ). The prompt error says that the thread is already startend and in running.. how can i solve it? I know that asyncTask should be better but i've problem cause in my application there are so many thread running and the device is so poorly peforming.. It's possible to stop definitelly a thread? are there other better solution?

Answer 1

Try implementing an AsyncTask . When the user first taps the button call the task's execute (Params... params) . On the second tap call the task's cancel (boolean mayInterruptIfRunning) . Put the download functionality in the task's doInBackground (Params... params)

Answer 2

Your run thread needs to occasionally check isInterrupted() and exit if it returns true. Otherwise the thread will never be canceled.

I think your entire architecture is wrong though. Downloading 9000 files onto a mobile phone? Even if each file is only 1KB, that's a huge amount of memory for a mobile app. And at the very least you ought to zip up that data and download a zip, for your own sanity.