Android widget with changing text

Question

I'm attempting to create an incredibly simple widget that changes the text displayed every 5s or so. However I've had major headaches attempting to get this to work. Obviously I can't use the onUpdate call as it's a minimum of every 30min. Currently my solution uses an Timer in an extended Service class, which is as ugly as hell and tends to run like a dog after a while. Is there a "clean" way of doing this, ie. in a manner that doesn't require a Widget, UpdateService, Timers etc.

I'm not asking for an entire solution, just a pointer as to how to go about doing this in an efficient manner.

Thanks, John

Answer 1

Use a CountdownTimer :

 new CountdownTimer(5000, 1000) {

     public void onTick(long millisUntilFinished) {
         mTextField.setText("seconds remaining: " + millisUntilFinished / 1000);
     }

     public void onFinish() {
         mTextField.setText("done!");
     }
  }.start();

Answer 2

What i have done is added the below process that is called in your Widget Provider.... like so...

so the widget will update for the next 24 hours every 30secs....

I have also in my main app code I have a few prefs that I update and then I use the provider event to then call the timer that pulls the pref info.... updating with no service :)

 @Override
    public void onUpdate(Context context, AppWidgetManager appWidgetManager,
        int[] appWidgetIds) {

        try {
            final int N = appWidgetIds.length;
            for (int i=0; i<N; i++) {
                int appWidgetId = appWidgetIds[i];
                updateAppWidget(context, appWidgetManager, appWidgetId);


            }

        updateWidgetView(context, context.getSharedPreferences(
                    MainActivity.APP_PREFERENCES,
                        Context.MODE_PRIVATE));
        } catch (Exception e) {
                e.printStackTrace();
        }





    }




 public static void updateAppWidget(final Context context, final AppWidgetManager appWidgetManager,
              final int appWidgetId){

        Context c;
         c = context;
             try {

                 new CountDownTimer(86400, 30000) {

                     public void onTick(long millisUntilFinished) {
                    //do proc every 30sec here. pull prefs and show them                            
                         SharedPreferences preferencesaa = PreferenceManager.getDefaultSharedPreferences(context); 

                          String drinkmsg = preferencesaa.getString("WIDGETTEXT", "You need to drink water.");

                         RemoteViews updateViews = new RemoteViews(context.getPackageName(), R.layout.widget);
                         updateViews.setTextViewText(R.id.widget_text_threat, drinkmsg.toString());

                         appWidgetManager.updateAppWidget(appWidgetId, updateViews); 
                     }

                     public void onFinish() {

                     }
                  }.start();



            } catch (Exception e) {
                // TODO Auto-generated catch block
                e.printStackTrace();
            }

            }

First App that I am about to release. 8 Cups a Day™