appcelerator - execute function in the background?

Nearly done my first titanium developer app however, the biggest issue (and lack of documentation of) is the ability to execute a function in the background.

I have a function that 开发者_如何学编程basically just queries an external json file and then loops through it inserting about 150 records in the database. This completely hangs the app until it's done.

I've tried a jquery async loop plugin and it works though the rest of the app is still very slow / responsive to any commands.

It has to be possible to execute a function in a background thread or something while the rest of the app is completely accessible.

Anyone know how to do this?

just put your code in a setTimeout:

setTimeout(function (){
  /* your code */
},0);

The behavior is like a thread.

I think its been a while since you asked this but I had the same issue today and I solved using the code from: Background function Acppcelerator

One solution here indicates the specific functionality will be available in a later release

http://developer.appcelerator.com/question/68231/background-thread--timer-thread--service-thread

Another solution is to create a event and fire it off since windows/views execute on a separate thread, Scroll down to the Events Section on this page

// fire  the event for the task
Ti.App.fireEvent("doLongTask");

Ti.App.addEventListener("doLongTask", function () {
    // doing long task...
});