[lorennorman]

I need to create a separate thread to make an HTTP request. The parent thread can easily poll the daughter thread and update its own members (graphical elements) but the daughter thread can't update those members itself, despite the fact that the same object is visible (the daughter thread is an inner class of the parent thread.)

What gives? It seems like when i try to refer back to the parent thread's members, the daughter thread just locks up and never makes the HTTP request at all, but i'm not getting error messages or anything. Polling is really out of the question, when the http request completes, i need to tell the user about the results. Any hints, developer community?

[fbrimm]

lorennorman,

I had a similar application, only using a socket connection instead of http.

I could never figure out how to manipulate the parent thread directly from the daughter thread. The best I could do was to pop/push the parent GUI thread to force it to redisplay using the new data that has been received.

Someone suggested invalidating the parent GUI, but that didn't work for my GUI app.

I'd love to learn if there is a better/proper way to do it.

fbrimm

[lorennorman]

Ok, i have a well known screen navigator class that gives me static access to the UiApplication object, so i'll mess with the pop/push method you mentioned and see if that enlightens me on the design a bit.

Does RIM just have trouble with Threads, or are we doing something wrong (he casually asks the peanut gallery...)?

[lorennorman]

Solved! You need to use the invokeLater(Runnable) static method from the Application class. The daughter thread can call a function in the parent thread that modifies its own members in a subthread (runnable) passed to that function. I'll show you:

daughter thread, in run method can call this function in parent thread:

private void updateText(final byte[] data)
{
Application.getApplication().invokeLater(new Runnable() {
public void run() {
_infoField.setText("Received "+ data.length +" bytes of text.");
_textField.setText(new String(data));
}
});
}

and it will update the appropriate member Fields whenever the dispatching thread becomes available, as opposed to crashing with IllegalStateException, or whatever it does without the invokeLater() call.