WorkManager系列（十二）Threading in Worker

When you use a Worker, WorkManager automatically calls Worker.doWork() on a background thread. The background thread comes from the Executor specified in WorkManager's Configuration. By default, WorkManager sets up an Executor for you - but you can also customize your own. For example, you can share an existing background Executor in your app, or create a single-threaded Executor to make sure all your background work executes serially, or even specify a ThreadPool with a different thread count. To customize the Executor, make sure you have enabled manual initialization of WorkManager. When configuring WorkManager, you can specify your Executor as follows:

WorkManager.initialize(
    context,
    new Configuration.Builder()
        .setExecutor(Executors.newFixedThreadPool(8))
        .build());

Here is an example of a simple Worker that downloads the content of some websites sequentially:

public class DownloadWorker extends Worker {

    public DownloadWorker(Context context, WorkerParameters params) {
        super(context, params);
    }

    @NonNull
    @Override
    public Result doWork() {
        for (int i = 0; i < 100; ++i) {
            try {
                downloadSynchronously("https://www.google.com");
            } catch (IOException e) {
                return Result.failure();
            }
        }

        return Result.success();
    }

}

Note that Worker.doWork() is a synchronous call - you are expected to do the entirety of your background work in a blocking fashion and finish it by the time the method exits. If you call an asynchronous API in doWork() and return a Result, your callback may not operate properly. If you find yourself in this situation, consider using a ListenableWorker (see Threading in ListenableWorker).

 

When a currently running Worker is stopped for any reason, it receives a call to Worker.onStopped(). Override this method or call Worker.isStopped() to checkpoint your code and free up resources when necessary. When the Worker in the example above is stopped, it may be in the middle of its loop of downloading items and will continue doing so even though it has been stopped. To optimize this behavior, you can do something like this:

public class DownloadWorker extends Worker {

    public DownloadWorker(Context context, WorkerParameters params) {
        super(context, params);
    }

    @NonNull
    @Override
    public Result doWork() {
        for (int i = 0; i < 100; ++i) {
            if (isStopped()) {
                break;
            }

            try {
                downloadSynchronously("https://www.google.com");
            } catch (IOException e) {
                return Result.failure();
            }
        }

        return Result.success();
    }
}

Once a Worker has been stopped, it doesn't matter what you return from Worker.doWork(); the Result will be ignored.