AsyncTask loop doInBackground()

I'm creating an application which communicates开发者_StackOverflow中文版 with a web service.

I have a method heartBeat I would like to call asynchronous every 5secs or so. My problem is not how to do this asynchronous. But how I keep the job done. I use a inner class which inherit from AsyncTask. My question is how can I start this thread every 5sec?

I have tried something like from doInBackground()

while (true) {
  ...
  Thread.sleep(5000);
}

but I also need the return statement, to tell the UI thread whatever the web service is available or not.

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You can use publishProgress() from within doInBackgroound() and then do UI stuff in onProgressUpdate()