[android] Running multiple AsyncTasks at the same time -- not possible?

I'm trying to run two AsyncTasks at the same time. (Platform is Android 1.5, HTC Hero.) However, only the first gets executed. Here's a simple snippet to describe my problem:

public class AndroidJunk extends Activity {
 class PrinterTask extends AsyncTask<String, Void, Void> {
     protected Void doInBackground(String ... x) {
      while (true) {
       System.out.println(x[0]);
       try {
        Thread.sleep(1000);
       } catch (InterruptedException ie) {
        ie.printStackTrace();
       }
      }
        }
    };

    @Override
    public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        setContentView(R.layout.main);

        new PrinterTask().execute("bar bar bar");
        new PrinterTask().execute("foo foo foo");

        System.out.println("onCreate() is done.");
    }
}

The output I expect is:

onCreate() is done.
bar bar bar
foo foo foo
bar bar bar
foo foo foo

And so on. However, what I get is:

onCreate() is done.
bar bar bar
bar bar bar
bar bar bar

The second AsyncTask never gets executed. If I change the order of the execute() statements, only the foo task will produce output.

Am I missing something obvious here and/or doing something stupid? Is it not possible to run two AsyncTasks at the same time?

Edit: I realized the phone in question runs Android 1.5, I updated the problem descr. accordingly. I don't have this problem with an HTC Hero running Android 2.1. Hmmm ...

The android developers example of loading bitmaps efficiently uses a custom asynctask (copied from jellybean) so you can use the executeOnExecutor in apis lower than < 11

http://developer.android.com/training/displaying-bitmaps/index.html

Download the code and go to util package.

Making @sulai suggestion more generic :

@TargetApi(Build.VERSION_CODES.HONEYCOMB) // API 11
public static <T> void executeAsyncTask(AsyncTask<T, ?, ?> asyncTask, T... params) {
    if(Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= Build.VERSION_CODES.HONEYCOMB)
        asyncTask.executeOnExecutor(AsyncTask.THREAD_POOL_EXECUTOR, params);
    else
        asyncTask.execute(params);
}   

It is posible. My android device version is 4.0.4 and android.os.Build.VERSION.SDK_INT is 15

I have 3 spinners

Spinner c_fruit=(Spinner) findViewById(R.id.fruits);
Spinner c_vegetable=(Spinner) findViewById(R.id.vegetables);
Spinner c_beverage=(Spinner) findViewById(R.id.beverages);

And also I have a Async-Tack class.

Here is my spinner loading code

RequestSend reqs_fruit = new RequestSend(this);
reqs_fruit.where="Get_fruit_List";
reqs_fruit.title="Loading fruit";
reqs_fruit.execute();

RequestSend reqs_vegetable = new RequestSend(this);
reqs_vegetable.where="Get_vegetable_List";
reqs_vegetable.title="Loading vegetable";
reqs_vegetable.execute();

RequestSend reqs_beverage = new RequestSend(this);
reqs_beverage.where="Get_beverage_List";
reqs_beverage.title="Loading beverage";
reqs_beverage.execute();

This is working perfectly. One by one my spinners loaded. I didn't user executeOnExecutor.

Here is my Async-task class

public class RequestSend  extends AsyncTask<String, String, String > {

    private ProgressDialog dialog = null;
    public Spinner spin;
    public String where;
    public String title;
    Context con;
    Activity activity;      
    String[] items;

    public RequestSend(Context activityContext) {
        con = activityContext;
        dialog = new ProgressDialog(activityContext);
        this.activity = activityContext;
    }

    @Override
    protected void onPostExecute(String result) {
        try {
            ArrayAdapter<String> adapter = new ArrayAdapter<String> (activity, android.R.layout.simple_spinner_item, items);       
            adapter.setDropDownViewResource(android.R.layout.simple_spinner_dropdown_item);
            spin.setAdapter(adapter);
        } catch (NullPointerException e) {
            Toast.makeText(activity, "Can not load list. Check your connection", Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show();
            e.printStackTrace();
        } catch (Exception e)  {
            Toast.makeText(activity, "Can not load list. Check your connection", Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show();
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
        super.onPostExecute(result);

        if (dialog != null)
            dialog.dismiss();   
    }

    protected void onPreExecute() {
        super.onPreExecute();
        dialog.setTitle(title);
        dialog.setMessage("Wait...");
        dialog.setCancelable(false); 
        dialog.show();
    }

    @Override
    protected String doInBackground(String... Strings) {
        try {
            Send_Request();
            } catch (NullPointerException e) {
                e.printStackTrace();
            } catch (Exception e) {
                e.printStackTrace();
            }
        return null;
    }

    public void Send_Request() throws JSONException {

        try {
            String DataSendingTo = "http://www.example.com/AppRequest/" + where;
            //HttpClient
            HttpClient httpClient = new DefaultHttpClient();
            //Post header
            HttpPost httpPost = new HttpPost(DataSendingTo);
            //Adding data
            List<NameValuePair> nameValuePairs = new ArrayList<NameValuePair>(2);

            nameValuePairs.add(new BasicNameValuePair("authorized","001"));

            httpPost.setEntity(new UrlEncodedFormEntity(nameValuePairs));
            // execute HTTP post request
            HttpResponse response = httpClient.execute(httpPost);

            BufferedReader reader;
            try {
                reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(response.getEntity().getContent()));
                StringBuilder builder = new StringBuilder();
                String line = null;
                while ((line = reader.readLine()) != null) {
                    builder.append(line) ;
                }

                JSONTokener tokener = new JSONTokener(builder.toString());
                JSONArray finalResult = new JSONArray(tokener);
                items = new String[finalResult.length()]; 
                // looping through All details and store in public String array
                for(int i = 0; i < finalResult.length(); i++) {
                    JSONObject c = finalResult.getJSONObject(i);
                    items[i]=c.getString("data_name");
                }

            } catch (ClientProtocolException e) {
                e.printStackTrace();
            } catch (IOException e) {
                e.printStackTrace();
            }

        } catch (ClientProtocolException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        } catch (IOException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }
}

Just to include the latest update (UPDATE 4) in @Arhimed 's immaculate answer in the very good summary of @sulai:

void doTheTask(AsyncTask task) {
    if (Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= Build.VERSION_CODES.KITKAT) { // Android 4.4 (API 19) and above
        // Parallel AsyncTasks are possible, with the thread-pool size dependent on device
        // hardware
        task.execute(params);
    } else if (Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= Build.VERSION_CODES.HONEYCOMB) { // Android 3.0 to
        // Android 4.3
        // Parallel AsyncTasks are not possible unless using executeOnExecutor
        task.executeOnExecutor(AsyncTask.THREAD_POOL_EXECUTOR, params);
    } else { // Below Android 3.0
        // Parallel AsyncTasks are possible, with fixed thread-pool size
        task.execute(params);
    }
}

if you want to execute tasks parallel,you need call the method executeOnExecutor(AsyncTask.THREAD_POOL_EXECUTOR, "your task name") after Android version of 3.0; but this method is not exist before Android 3.0 and after 1.6 because it execute parallel by itself, So I suggest you customize your own AsyncTask class in your project,to avoid throw exception in different Android version.

This allows for parallel execution on all android versions with API 4+ (Android 1.6+):

@TargetApi(Build.VERSION_CODES.HONEYCOMB) // API 11
void startMyTask(AsyncTask asyncTask) {
    if(Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= Build.VERSION_CODES.HONEYCOMB)
        asyncTask.executeOnExecutor(AsyncTask.THREAD_POOL_EXECUTOR, params);
    else
        asyncTask.execute(params);
}

This is a summary of Arhimed's excellent answer.

Please make sure you use API level 11 or higher as your project build target. In Eclipse, that is Project > Properties > Android > Project Build Target. This will not break backward compatibility to lower API levels. Don't worry, you will get Lint errors if your accidentally use features introduced later than minSdkVersion. If you really want to use features introduced later than minSdkVersion, you can suppress those errors using annotations, but in that case, you need take care about compatibility yourself. This is exactly what happened in the code snippet above.