Building responsive apps with AsyncTaskLoader

AsyncTaskLoader is a Loader implementation that uses AsyncTasks to perform its background work, though this is largely hidden from us when we implement our own subclasses.

We don't need to trouble ourselves with the AsyncTasks—they are completely hidden by AsyncTaskLoader—but with what we learned earlier about AsyncTask, it is interesting to note that tasks are, by default, executed using AsyncTask.executeOnExecutor(AsyncTask.THREAD_POOL_EXECUTOR) to ensure a high degree of concurrency when multiple Loaders are in use.

Note

The AsyncTaskLoader in the compatibility package (android.support.v4.content) does not rely on the public AsyncTask in the platform. Instead, the compatibility package uses an internal ModernAsyncTask implementation to avoid Android fragmentation. The ModernAsyncTask creates threads with the name ModernAsyncTask #<N>.

In the next section we will use AsyncTaskLoader to load in the background, a currency to Bitcoin exchange...