Android Toast started from Service only displays once

Question

I have a service that monitors a socket connection. When the connection is lost it needs to display a Toast informing the user that it is reconnecting. This works fine the first time. After that I see the enqueueToast in the log but the toast is not displayed. Any ideas are appreciated. I thought this was going to be an easy thing to add, but I must be missing something.

Log entry INFO/NotificationService(118): enqueueToast pkg=com.abc callback=android.app.ITransientNotification$Stub$Proxy@43f7b100 duration=1

Code that calls the Toast

public class ConnectionService extends Service { .....

public void restartConnection()
{
  try
  {
     Log.i(this.toString(), "Attempting to reconnect...");

     // increase the wait between each retry until the max is reached
     int sleepTime = reconnectCounter * MIN_RECON_WAIT;

     if (sleepTime > MAX_RECON_WAIT)
     {
        sleepTime = MAX_RECON_WAIT;
     }

     String msg = "The connection has been lost.  Restart attempt will start in: " + sleepTime/1000 + " seconds";

     Log.i(this.toString(), msg);
     Toast.makeText(getApplicationContext(), msg , Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show();

     Thread.sleep(sleepTime);

     // increment the counter
     reconnectCounter++;

     this.startConnectionThread();

  }
  catch (Exception e)
  {
      Log.e(this.toString(), "Exception: " + e.toString());
      e.printStackTrace();
  }
}// end retartConnection

Answer 1

Yeah, you could go with the runOnUiThread, that's a legit way.
Also, you could try the Handler alternative. Either way it should work.

Here is some code from the top of my head. I don't have the SDK now to test it but I think it should give you a general idea.

public class ConnectionService extends Service {  
  private Handler handler = new Handler();

  public void restartConnection(){
     int sleepTime = reconnectCounter * MIN_RECON_WAIT;
     if (sleepTime > MAX_RECON_WAIT)
     {
        sleepTime = MAX_RECON_WAIT;
     }
     String msg = "The connection has been lost.  Restart attempt will start in: " + sleepTime/1000 + " seconds";
     (new Timer()).schedule(
     new TimerTask() {
        public void run() {
           handler.post(new Runnable() {
              public void run() {
                 Toast.makeText(getApplicationContext(), "msg", Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show();
                 reconnectCounter++;
                 this.startConnectionThread()
              }
           });
        }
     }, sleepTime);
  }//end restartConnection

}//end ConnectionService