Ideal way to cancel an executing AsyncTask

Question

I am running remote audio-file-fetching and audio file playback operations in a background thread using AsyncTask. A Cancellable progress bar is shown for the time the fetch operation runs.

I want to cancel/abort the AsyncTask run when the user cancels (decides against) the operation. What is the ideal way to handle such a case?

Answer 1

Just discovered that AlertDialogs's boolean cancel(...); I've been using everywhere actually does nothing. Great.
So...

public class MyTask extends AsyncTask<Void, Void, Void> {

    private volatile boolean running = true;
    private final ProgressDialog progressDialog;

    public MyTask(Context ctx) {
        progressDialog = gimmeOne(ctx);

        progressDialog.setCancelable(true);
        progressDialog.setOnCancelListener(new OnCancelListener() {
            @Override
            public void onCancel(DialogInterface dialog) {
                // actually could set running = false; right here, but I'll
                // stick to contract.
                cancel(true);
            }
        });

    }

    @Override
    protected void onPreExecute() {
        progressDialog.show();
    }

    @Override
    protected void onCancelled() {
        running = false;
    }

    @Override
    protected Void doInBackground(Void... params) {

        while (running) {
            // does the hard work
        }
        return null;
    }

    // ...

}