How Can Handlers Be Used to Delay Method Calls in Android?

Utilizing Handlers to Delay Method Calls in Android

In the realm of mobile development, the need often arises to execute a specific task after a predefined interval. This is where handlers come into play in Android. Handlers serve as messengers between threads, allowing you to schedule tasks to be performed at a future time.

A Timeless Example from Objective-C

In Objective-C, this was elegantly achieved using the performSelector method. It provided a convenient way to call a specific method after a specified delay:

[self performSelector:@selector(DoSomething) withObject:nil afterDelay:5];

The Android Equivalent with Handlers

Android provides a similar mechanism through handlers. To delay the execution of a method, you can utilize the postDelayed() method. This method takes a Runnable object as its argument, which defines the code that should be executed after the specified delay. Here's how you can implement this in Kotlin and Java:

Kotlin Solution

Handler(Looper.getMainLooper()).postDelayed({
    // Do something after 100ms
}, 100)

Java Solution

final Handler handler = new Handler(Looper.getMainLooper());
handler.postDelayed(new Runnable() {
    @Override
    public void run() {
        // Do something after 100ms
    }
}, 100);

In both examples, the delay is specified in milliseconds (100 in this case) as the second parameter. Remember to import the android.os.Handler class for both Kotlin and Java.

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