Fragment and null getActivity after onAttach - android

I'm trying to understand under what circumstances can getActivity() return null in a fragment AFTER onAttach. I typically start an async task in onCreate or onCreateView inside my fragments but I'm getting error reports indicating sometimes getActivity() is null when the async task finishes. Error reports are coming in via crashlytics but can't reproduce them.
The async tasks are "blocking" - I display a modal non-dismissable progress bar. Also rotation is prevented by calling setRequestedOrientation.
I'm using v4 support Fragment and FragmentActivity. Fragments are set to retain state.
What am I missing? Are there other config changes that may cause the fragment to be detached?
I tried temporarily enabling rotation and the dev option to destroy activity after leaving it but still can't reproduce this...
Here's some of the relevant code inside one of my fragments, in this case it would sometimes break with an NPE at activity.dismissSpinner:
#Override
public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
checkIfLoggedIn();
}
public void checkIfLoggedIn() {
LoginActivity activity = (LoginActivity)getActivity();
activity.showSpinner("Connecting, please wait...");
AsyncTask<String, Void, JsonResponse> asyncTask = new AsyncTask<String, Void, JsonResponse>() {
protected JsonResponse doInBackground(String... notused) {
return cmsServer().getCurrentUser(getActivity());
}
protected void onPostExecute(JsonResponse result) {
LoginActivity activity = (LoginActivity)getActivity();
activity.dismissSpinner();
//...more stuff here
}
};
asyncTask.execute();
}

Do you stop/cancel your AsyncTask if your app goes to background or is paused?
Consider the following scenario: your AsyncTask is executed, and when prompted with the progress bar, the user decides to do other stuff while she waits for the task to complete. She does so by pressing the home button. Alas, this might destroy the fragment and the activity. The running AsyncTask knows nothing about it, and when done, getActivity() method invocations (or local variables pointing to a non-existent Activity) may as well return null, causing your app to crash.

The Fragmentlife cycle is as follows
According to Fragment life-cycle onCreate() and onCreateView()are called before the Activity creation. so when we call getActivity() in these methods in returns null.
so instead of starting the async task in the onCreateView() start it in onStart() or onResume() so that getActivity() returns the exact Activity reference.
For more details click here

Related

Ignoring navigate() call: FragmentManager has already saved its state

I'm using navigation in MainActivity, then I start SecondActivity (for result). After finish of SecondActivity I would like to continue with navigation in MainActivity, but FragmentManager has saved his state already.
On Navigation.findNavController(view).navigate(R.id.action_next, bundle) I receive log message:
Ignoring navigate() call: FragmentManager has already saved its state
How I can continue in navigation?
You must always call super.onActivityResult() in your Activity's onActivityResult. That is what:
Unlocks Fragments so they can do fragment transactions (i.e., avoid the state is already saved errors)
Dispatches onActivityResult callbacks to Fragments that called startActivityForResult.
Finally, I fix the issue by simple calling super.onPostResume() right before navigating to restore state.
I've solved this problem this way:
#Override
public void onActivityResult() { //inside my fragment that started activity for result
model.navigateToResults = true; //set flag, that navigation should be performed
}
and then
#Override
public void onResume() { //inside fragment that started activity for result
super.onResume();
if(model.navigateToResults){
model.navigateToResults = false;
navController.navigate(R.id.action_startFragment_to_resultsFragment);
}
}
not sure, if this is not a terrible hack, but it worked for me. FramgentManager state is restored at this point (onResume) and no problems with navigation occur.
I believe above solutions should work. But my problem was different. There was a third party sdk which was launching its activity using context provided by me and it was delivering the result on a listener which I had to implement.
So there was no option for me to work with onActivityResult :(
I used below hack to solve the issue:
private var runnable: Runnable? = null // Runnable object to contain the navigation code
override fun onResume() {
super.onResume()
// run any task waiting for this fragment to be resumed
runnable?.run()
}
override fun responseListener(response: Response) { // Function in which you are getting response
if (!isResumed) {
// add navigation to runnable as fragment is not resumed
runnable = Runnable {
navController.navigate(R.id.destination_to_navigate)
}
} else {
// navigate normally as fragment is already resumed
navController.navigate(R.id.destination_to_navigate)
}
}
Let me know if there is any better solution for this. Currently I found this very simple and easy to implement :)
call super.onPostResume() before navigation....It's working

State Loss Management

I've an Activity A that contains a Login Fragment and an Activity B that contains a Home Fragment.
I've to start B from Login Fragment after a succesfully login request (async).
I've a callback listener inside the login fragment:
onSuccess(result) {
startActivity(B);
}
Today I met this nice bug: getting exception "IllegalStateException: Can not perform this action after onSaveInstanceState".
I think that's not properly a bug, anyway I don't know how to workaround that. This blog post suggests to avoid transaction inside async callback methods, yeah but how? commitAllowingStateLoss() should be used as a last resort: in case, should I use it inside Home Fragment transaction in Activity B creation method?
Basically, what should I do to start another activity after async callback?
You should use onPostExecute(result) in the AsyncTask:
private class LoginTask extends AsyncTask<parameters,...> {
...
protected void onPostExecute(Long result) {
//if result successful start ActivityB
}
}
Onpost fires after the asynctask is complete.
It runs on the UI thread so that should solve your problem.
Put this in your main activity:
public void run(){
//code you would normally have after task completes
}
Then put this in your onSuccess:
mainactivity.runUIonthread()

which Operation will perform first in onStart or onCreate in Android

I want to perform one data base Operation once. I want to do this when My Activity is Visible. Where shall I puty my LoadDatabase() function
LoadDatabase();
this is my oncreate of activity
#Override
public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState)
{
super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
setContentView(R.layout.retrospectscan);
}
this is my onStart
#Override
protected void onStart()
{
super.onStart();
}
Where Shall I put my LoadDatabase Code ? So that It will operated only if activity is fully Visible.
If Any other Approach is there please help me.
The complete activity lifecycle is here:
Though loading from database may be lengthy task , you can try doing it in AsyncTask or in onStart.
You can also use it on onResume. This depends on your application use.
user2737044
use Application context and load your database in application context create().
2nd thing is that, In activity onCreate() call first then it will call onstart().

onCreate sometimes running in background

I'm not quite sure how to debug the phenomenon I'm currently seeing in my Android application.
I have an Activity which is just doing some networking stuff (which needs to be done in background).
This activity is launched from a PreferencesFragment using an Intent.
When the user selects the preference item, the Intent is fired and the Activity is started (then it does the networking stuff and quits using finish()).
I created an AsyncTask to perform the networking actions in the background.
(I thought that onCreate will most probably run in the UI thread...)
But then, an exception occurred:
java.lang.RuntimeException: Can't create handler inside thread that has not called Looper.prepare()
Did onCreate() already run in the background???
To test that, I moved the networking functions directly into onCreate().
This was working well...
... at least several times.
Suddenly, an exception was thrown:
java.lang.RuntimeException: Unable to start activity ComponentInfo{...}: android.os.NetworkOnMainThreadException
Moving the code back to the AsyncTask helped... for some time.
Does anyone know why this phenomenon might occur?
Are there scenarios when onCreate() runs in the UI thread and others when onCreate() runs in background?
My class is as simple as this:
public class ReregisterInDb extends Activity {
#Override
protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
new ReregisterAsyncTask().execute(""); // solution 1
// solution 2
//GCMFunctions gcmFunctions = new GCMFunctions(getApplicationContext());
//gcmFunctions.registerInDb();
super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
finish();
}
class ReregisterAsyncTask extends AsyncTask<String, Void, Void> {
#Override
protected Void doInBackground(String... params) {
GCMFunctions gcmFunctions = new GCMFunctions(getApplicationContext());
gcmFunctions.registerInDb();
return null;
}
}
}
try to move the call of the method finish() of the activity in the method onPostExecute of async task
You can't do anything before calling super.onCreate(...) put that right at the beginning as I've shown below. EDIT: Also, your use of getApplicationContext in the AsyncTask is likely causing an issue, try creating a global Context variable and initializing that in onCreate and see if that works.
Context mContext;
#Override
protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
mContext = this;
new ReregisterAsyncTask().execute(""); // solution 1
finish();
}
class ReregisterAsyncTask extends AsyncTask<String, Void, Void> {
#Override
protected Void doInBackground(String... params) {
GCMFunctions gcmFunctions = new GCMFunctions(mContext);
gcmFunctions.registerInDb();
return null;
}
}
I finally found out the reason for this strange behavior.
I did not post the contents of the registerInDb() method.
In that method, there is a Toast:
Toast.makeText(context,
"Not currently registered with GCM. [...]",
Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show();
This message is causing the exceptions...
The solution is:
call the function in the UI thread so that the Toast messages work and
enter code heremove the AsyncTask to only cover the actual network code.
Sorry for not giving all the details. I did not think that the Toast message was the root cause.
I learned that you cannot have Toasts in AsyncTasks. The always have to run on the UI thread.

Android AsyncTask context behavior

I've been working with AsyncTasks in Android and I am dealing with an issue.
Take a simple example, an Activity with one AsyncTask. The task on the background does not do anything spectacular, it just sleeps for 8 seconds.
At the end of the AsyncTask in the onPostExecute() method I am just setting a button visibility status to View.VISIBLE, only to verify my results.
Now, this works great until the user decides to change his phones orientation while the AsyncTask is working (within the 8 second sleep window).
I understand the Android activity life cycle and I know the activity gets destroyed and recreated.
This is where the problem comes in. The AsyncTask is referring to a button and apparently holds a reference to the context that started the AsyncTask in the first place.
I would expect, that this old context (since the user caused an orientation change) to either become null and the AsyncTask to throw an NPE for the reference to the button it is trying to make visible.
Instead, no NPE is thrown, the AsyncTask thinks that the button reference is not null, sets it to visible. The result? Nothing is happening on the screen!
Update: I have tackled this by keeping a WeakReference to the activity and switching when a configuration change happens. This is cumbersome.
Here's the code:
public class Main extends Activity {
private Button mButton = null;
private Button mTestButton = null;
#Override
public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
setContentView(R.layout.main);
mButton = (Button) findViewById(R.id.btnStart);
mButton.setOnClickListener(new OnClickListener () {
#Override
public void onClick(View v) {
new taskDoSomething().execute(0l);
}
});
mTestButton = (Button) findViewById(R.id.btnTest);
}
private class TaskDoSomething extends AsyncTask<Long, Integer, Integer>
{
#Override
protected Integer doInBackground(Long... params) {
Log.i("LOGGER", "Starting...");
try {
Thread.sleep(8000);
} catch (InterruptedException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
return 0;
}
#Override
protected void onPostExecute(Integer result) {
Log.i("LOGGER", "...Done");
mTestButton.setVisibility(View.VISIBLE);
}
}
}
Try executing it and while the AsyncTask is working change your phones orientation.
AsyncTask is not designed to be reused once an Activity has been torn down and restarted. The internal Handler object becomes stale, just like you stated. In the Shelves example by Romain Guy, he simple cancels any currently running AsyncTask's and then restarts new ones post-orientation change.
It is possible to hand off your Thread to the new Activity, but it adds a lot of plumbing. There is no generally agreed on way to do this, but you can read about my method here : http://foo.jasonhudgins.com/2010/03/simple-progressbar-tutorial.html
If you only need a context and won't use it for ui stuff you can simply pass the ApplicationContext to your AsyncTask.You often need the context for system resources, for example.
Don't try to update the UI from an AsyncTask and try to avoid handling configuration changes yourself as it can get messy. In order to update the UI you could register a Broadcast receiver and send a Broadcast.
You should also have the AsyncTask as a separate public class from the activity as mentioned above, it makes testing a lot easier. Unfortunately Android programming often reinforces bad practices and the official examples are not helping.
This is the type of thing that leads me to always prevent my Activity from being destroyed/recreated on orientation change.
To do so add this to your <Activity> tag in your manifest file:
android:configChanges="orientation|keyboardHidden"
And override onConfigurationChanged in your Activity class:
#Override
public void onConfigurationChanged(final Configuration newConfig)
{
// Ignore orientation change to keep activity from restarting
super.onConfigurationChanged(newConfig);
}
To avoid this you can use the answer givin here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/2124731/327011
But if you need to destroy the activity (different layouts for portrait and landscape) you can make the AsyncTask a public class (Read here why it shouldn't be private Android: AsyncTask recommendations: private class or public class?) and then create a method setActivity to set the reference to the current activity whenever it is destroyed/created.
You can see an example here: Android AsyncTask in external class

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