Monday, May 3, 2010

ViewFlipper "Receiver not registered" Error

There is this error that plagued me for a few months. If you use a ViewFlipper, this error will pop up on Android 2.1 devices every once in a while:

java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Receiver not registered: android.widget.ViewFlipper$1@44b6ab90


It does not affect any devices before 2.1, and so what was troubling at first was that the 2.1 source code wasn't yet released so I could't diagnose the issue. Everyone knew it had to do with orientation changes on an Activity with a ViewFlipper, but why exactly it happens isn't clear (I took my own stab at it, but was incorrect about the exact cause; it just seems to happen randomly).

Thankfully, the source has been available now for a while. Obviously, the problem is that onDetachedFromWindow() is somehow being called before onAttachedToWindow(); but how do we come up with a workaround until it is fixed at Google?

One simple solution is to override onDetachedFromWindow() and catch the error from super:

@Override
protected void onDetachedFromWindow() {
try {
super.onDetachedFromWindow();
}
catch (IllegalArgumentException e) {

}
}


The only problem with this is that the error is thrown before calling updateRunning(). A simple workaround for this is to call stopFlipping(), as that will kick off updateRunning() without any negative side effects:

@Override
protected void onDetachedFromWindow() {
try {
super.onDetachedFromWindow();
}
catch (IllegalArgumentException e) {
stopFlipping();
}
}


You should only use this version of the class on Android 2.1 phones, as they are the only ones requiring the fix.

EDIT May 25, 2010: ViewFlipper bug still occurs in Android 2.2. I sure hope you didn't filter based on apiLevel == 7; better to use apiLevel >= 7.

22 comments:

  1. I've just had this problem as my first bug report in the Market so finding your post has saved me a huge amount of time tracking this down. Thanks for posting this.

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  2. Daniel,
    Great to get your blog on this! I am getting this issue in logs from Google for my ap. I will try your solution. However I do not see the reason for applying your fix only if the api is 2.1 or higher. I do not see any negative effect in applying it since you are calling the parent's functions. So is it really necessary?

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  3. Thank you very much for this workaround!

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  4. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  5. Awesome, just got this error and found this post expecting it to be my fault. Many thanks for the work around!

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  6. Just wanted to add my thanks as well. Same problem here of course. Android 2.2.

    Hope to see it fixed in the future.

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  7. Fixed my annoying issue, thanks a ton.

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  8. Thank you! I hope this will fix it... people are getting mad on the market!

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  9. Is this fixed in 2.3? Is there a bug report in the database?

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  10. http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=6191

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  11. @Chris I hope you realize I was the one who started that bug. :)

    I was incorrect in that it was not related to TabActivity, however.

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  12. Thank you a lot!! You made my day :D

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  13. Thank you. You have saved my day :)

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  14. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  15. i got this exception on android 4.2.1. ??
    can you tell me why this happen .....

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  16. yes its error in api provider itself still it continues all levels

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