Develop Reference

Detect app crash in android

I'm building an app that sometimes crashes, I want to know that it crashed in the next time I opened it so I can suggest to the user some post-crash options.
How can I detect the crash?
Also I want to be able to save the user's work before it crashes, I means real time detection of crash, can I do it without knowing where it crashed?

You will need to know where it crashed in order to set the try/catch blocks in the right place to, er, catch the crash and save the data or whatever you have in mind.
This is known as "graceful" termination if you want to consider it in more detail.
Unfortunately neither Java destructor/finalize methods nor lifecycle methods such as onDestroy are anywhere near as robust as try/catch blocks so I'm afraid that is your only option, and how many of us deal with exception prevention. No-one would wittingly provide a user experience that crashes, much less with loss of their data.

Take a took at the ACRA library. You can configure it so whenever a crash happens you can control it and even send the crash log by email

You can use try/catch blocks, then send details on the Exception in your catch.

There are implement UncaughtExceptionHandler as mentioned in these answers and write crash report in some file or use it another way.

ACRA is already mentioned.
However for paid version, I found BugSnag is very good at this.
Or if you want to take the extra mile, try AppSee.
AppSee even has video recording session of how the crash happens. It is from tapping that button on the second list, the menu button or even when the user slides left in your viewpager.

track error dialogs using omniture app measurement

I am not familiar with omniture tracking, so hoping that someone who has worked on that would be able to help. What I want is to track the number of times an error dialog is displayed. For example if my app shows time out error dialog, it should be tracked in site catalyst.. Can anyone tell, how can we do this?

Check out SiteCatalyst's Android AppMeasurement User Guide for general details on implementation methods.
To track error messages, you will want to create a custom variable (a prop or eVar) and dedicate it to error messages. Then, whenever an error message is fired, define that variable and send an image request. It'd probably be a good idea to define other variables at the same time (such as the current page) so you can get additional dimensions on when/how they're firing.
The pageType variable is usually used for error handling in JavaScript tracking libraries, however this has been removed in recent Android libraries.

Android: Usual way to stop and log an unrecoverable error

What is the usual way on Android to stop my application if it has reached an unrecoverable error.
finish() will not do it, since it wont stop any running services or threads. Furthermore I would like to inform the user what has happend and please him to send an error log.
As far as I googled, it seems like there is no way to close my application and open a special crashreport activity or something else to show the user whats going on or send a crash log.

I think you should throw unhandled runtime exception. In such case android will kill all your process. Also I suggest you to use ACRA. This library will help you to get crash report (via email, google docs, etс.) and it can show customizable error dialog to a user.

You should check this out. This could be your solution.
ACRA
Check the basic setup guide to start using the library. ACRA - Basic Setup

While ACRA is an okay solution, if you want to implement your own logging of unhandled exceptions try Thread.setDefaultUncaughtExceptionHandler(). That way you can get any exceptions that are thrown and not caught, and log them the way you like. You need to implement Thread.UncaughtExceptionHandler and pass it to that method.
With an Activity, it would look something like this in onCreate():
getMainLooper().getThread().setUncaughtExceptionHandler(new MyUncaughtExceptionHandler());

Android Force Close Uncatchable Unreportable

I've released my second game project on the Android Market this week, and immediately had multiple 1-star reports due to force closes. I tested it on many handsets and many emulators with zero issues. I'm completely at a loss for how to proceed and looking for advice.
I use Thread.setDefaultUncaughtExceptionHandler to intercept and report uncaught exceptions, then close gracefully. The people reporting force closes aren't getting to any of that, even though it is the first thing set in the application's main task constructor, and everything is wrapped in try/catches throughout. They are also reporting that there is no "Send Report" option in the force close popup (providing the Developer Console error reports), so I have absolutely no way of knowing what the problem is.
Uses Android 2.0, with android:minSdkVersion="5". Only Permission required is INTERNET.
(on Android market as 'Fortunes of War FREE' if you want to test)

I'm a bit surprised about the missing "Send report" button. What API level did you build the game with? I usually build the level with your minimum API level to make sure you're not using any API calls beyond that, but then switch back to the highest API level so you can use functionality like "install to SD".
I'm sure there's at least one user who wrote you a mail. Can you ask them to install LogCollector and mail you the log?
Btw, in general, I wouldn't use Thread.setDefaultUncaughtExceptionHandler so there IS the option to send a report. (It's ominously missing in your case, but normally, it should be there.)
Btw btw, the exception handler applies to the current thread. If you have an OpenGL app, maybe the crash happens in the GL thread?

I'm not sure if I understood you correctly, but as far as I know Android only shows that report dialog if you use its default UncaughtExceptionHandler.
Try this:
In your UncaughtExceptionHander's constructor, call Thread.getDefaultUncaughtExceptionHandler and save the returned object in a variable (let's call it defaultHandler). In your Handler's uncaughtException() do the things you want to do, and then call defaultHandler.uncaughtException() afterwards.
Maybe something you should know:
In my experience, your Context isn't functional anymore at uncaughtException(). So, you can't send broadcasts, etc anymore.
By the way, if you really wrapped everything in try/catch, that could be the reason why error reporting doesn't work as expected? :P
Good luck
Tom

Perhaps the force closes are caused by stalls, rather than exceptions. Users may not notice the difference. This kind of problem can occur more often if users have CPU hogging services running at the same time as your application, which explains why you're not seeing the issue in your testing.

Permission Internet sounds a lot like you try to transfer data from the net, which is very fast in your local LAN, but all of a sudden becomes slow (and time consuming) when people try this over their GSM connections.
If you then do the data transfer in the UI thread, this one is blocked and the system detects the block - but then this should end up in a "Did not respond" -- but then I've seen one user report an error with in the market on my app that was such a slow down cause.

android stop thread

hi im wanting to stop all threads when my main activity closes as some are still running afterwards and are giving NullPointerException as they try to access ArrayLists which no longer exist. however none of the obvious methods are working and they are also deprecated. is it possible as im currently using a try/catch statement as a workaround but would prefer a fix.
TIA
ng93

You need to have your MainActivity tell your threads that it's time to end. You could do this with some sort of value that each thread checks before they access the ArrayLists. Or you could live with the try/catch workaround. But there aren't any good, safe ways of killing threads, which is why those methods got deprecated.