[android] How can I run code on a background thread on Android?

An Alternative to AsyncTask is robospice. https://github.com/octo-online/robospice.

Some of the features of robospice.

1.executes asynchronously (in a background AndroidService) network requests (ex: REST requests using Spring Android).notify you app, on the UI thread, when result is ready.

2.is strongly typed ! You make your requests using POJOs and you get POJOs as request results.

3.enforce no constraints neither on POJOs used for requests nor on Activity classes you use in your projects.

4.caches results (in Json with both Jackson and Gson, or Xml, or flat text files, or binary files, even using ORM Lite).

5.notifies your activities (or any other context) of the result of the network request if and only if they are still alive

6.no memory leak at all, like Android Loaders, unlike Android AsyncTasks notifies your activities on their UI Thread.

7.uses a simple but robust exception handling model.

Samples to start with. https://github.com/octo-online/RoboSpice-samples.

A sample of robospice at https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.octo.android.robospice.motivations&feature=search_result.