How to use Non-Blocking Web-Request in android?

This code fetches content from the web without blocking the UI (runs in the background in a Thread). Once finished, it posts a Handler that is picked up by the UI as soon as possible.

import java.io.BufferedInputStream;

import java.io.InputStream;

import java.net.URL;

import java.net.URLConnection;

import org.apache.http.util.ByteArrayBuffer;

public class Iconic extends Activity {

private String html = "";

private Handler mHandler;

public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {

super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);

setContentView(R.layout.main);

mHandler = new Handler();

checkUpdate.start();

}

private Thread checkUpdate = new Thread() {

public void run() {

try {

 URL updateURL = new URL("http://iconic.4feets.com/update");

 URLConnection conn = updateURL.openConnection();

 InputStream is = conn.getInputStream();

 BufferedInputStream bis = new BufferedInputStream(is);

 ByteArrayBuffer baf = new ByteArrayBuffer(50);

 int current = 0;

 while((current = bis.read()) != -1){

 baf.append((byte)current);

 }

/* Convert the Bytes read to a String. */

html = new String(baf.toByteArray());

mHandler.post(showUpdate);

    } catch (Exception e) {

   }

  }

};

private Runnable showUpdate = new Runnable(){

public void run(){

Toast.makeText(Iconic.this, "HTML Code: " + html, Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show();

}

};

}