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I'm developing a Android AppWidget for my application. For updating my appwidget I need to download data from network. But when I try to do that in onUpdate method, my appWidget is killed by Android system. I learnt that time consuming operations can't be done in receivers so I launched a service from onUpdate method and launched a thread from that. But still the problem persists. Can anyone please let me know how to do network operations in Appwidget?

Amit Chintawar
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Delegate the download work to a service, probably an IntentService, possibly a WakefulIntentService depending on whether there is a risk that the device might fall asleep during the work itself.

Your AppWidgetProvider would just call startService() on your IntentService.

Your IntentService's onHandleIntent() method would do the work you presently have in onUpdate(), getting its own AppWidgetManager via the static getInstance() method. But, since onHandleIntent() is executed on a background thread, you can take as much time as you need. The IntentService will also automatically shut down once it is done with all outstanding work requests.

CommonsWare
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  • but how to combine that with use of RemoteViewsService? Should mentioned IntentService start RemoteViewsService after async operation is done? – Malachiasz Feb 05 '14 at 15:47
  • @Malachiasz: "Should mentioned IntentService start RemoteViewsService after async operation is done?" -- no. `RemoteViewsService` will be automatically used by the app widget framework. You need to make sure that the `RemoteViewsService` is aware of whatever data changes were made by the `IntentService`, such as by the `IntentService` updating a database that the `RemoteViewsService` needs to pull from. There should be a way to get the app widget to then reload its views from the `RemoteViewsService`, though I have not researched this and do not know off the top of my head how it is done. – CommonsWare Feb 05 '14 at 16:00