How to pause / sleep thread or process in Android?

Question

I want to make a pause between two lines of code, Let me explain a bit:

-> the user clicks a button (a card in fact) and I show it by changing the background of this button:

thisbutton.setBackgroundResource(R.drawable.icon);

-> after let's say 1 second, I need to go back to the previous state of the button by changing back its background:

thisbutton.setBackgroundResource(R.drawable.defaultcard);

-> I've tried to pause the thread between these two lines of code with:

try {
    Thread.sleep(1000);
} catch (InterruptedException e) {
    // TODO Auto-generated catch block
    e.printStackTrace();
}

However, this does not work. Maybe it's the process and not the Thread that I need to pause?

I've also tried (but it doesn't work):

new Reminder(5);

With this:

public class Reminder {

Timer timer;

        public Reminder(int seconds) {
            timer = new Timer();
            timer.schedule(new RemindTask(), seconds*1000);
        }

        class RemindTask extends TimerTask {
            public void run() {
                System.out.format("Time's up!%n");
                timer.cancel(); //Terminate the timer thread
            }
        }  
    }

How can I pause/sleep the thread or process?

Answer 1

You probably don't want to do it that way. By putting an explicit sleep() in your button-clicked event handler, you would actually lock up the whole UI for a second. One alternative is to use some sort of single-shot Timer. Create a TimerTask to change the background color back to the default color, and schedule it on the Timer.

Another possibility is to use a Handler. There's a tutorial about somebody who switched from using a Timer to using a Handler.

Incidentally, you can't pause a process. A Java (or Android) process has at least 1 thread, and you can only sleep threads.

Answer 2

Or you could use:

android.os.SystemClock.sleep(checkEvery)

which has the advantage of not requiring a wrapping try ... catch.

Answer 3

In addition to Mr. Yankowsky's answers, you could also use postDelayed(). This is available on any View (e.g., your card) and takes a Runnable and a delay period. It executes the Runnable after that delay.

Answer 4

This is what I did at the end of the day - works fine now :

@Override
    public void onClick(View v) {
        my_button.setBackgroundResource(R.drawable.icon);
        // SLEEP 2 SECONDS HERE ...
        final Handler handler = new Handler(); 
        Timer t = new Timer(); 
        t.schedule(new TimerTask() { 
                public void run() { 
                        handler.post(new Runnable() { 
                                public void run() { 
                                 my_button.setBackgroundResource(R.drawable.defaultcard); 
                                } 
                        }); 
                } 
        }, 2000); 
    }