Preventing/catching “IllegalArgumentException: par

Question

I have a ListView with some focusable components inside (mostly EditTexts). Yeah, I know this isn't exactly recommended, but in general, almost everything is working fine and the focus goes where it has to go (with a few tweaks I had to code). Anyway, my problem is that there's a weird race condition when scrolling the list with your finger and then suddenly using the trackball when the IME keyboard is being displayed. Something must go out of bounds and get recycled at which point the offsetRectBetweenParentAndChild() method must kick in and throw the IllegalArgumentException.

The problem is that this exception is thrown outside of any block in which I can insert a try/catch (as far as I know). So there are two valid solutions to this question, either:

1. Someone knows why this exception being thrown and how to stop it from happening
2. Someone knows how to put a try/catch block somewhere that will at least let my application survive. As far as I know the problem is that of focus, so it definitely shouldn't kill my application (which is what it's doing). I tried overriding the ViewGroup's methods but those two offset* methods are marked as final.

Stack trace:

08-17 18:23:09.825: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(1608): FATAL EXCEPTION: main
08-17 18:23:09.825: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(1608): java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: parameter must be a descendant of this view
08-17 18:23:09.825: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(1608):     at android.view.ViewGroup.offsetRectBetweenParentAndChild(ViewGroup.java:2633)
08-17 18:23:09.825: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(1608):     at android.view.ViewGroup.offsetDescendantRectToMyCoords(ViewGroup.java:2570)
08-17 18:23:09.825: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(1608):     at android.view.ViewRoot.scrollToRectOrFocus(ViewRoot.java:1624)
08-17 18:23:09.825: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(1608):     at android.view.ViewRoot.draw(ViewRoot.java:1357)
08-17 18:23:09.825: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(1608):     at android.view.ViewRoot.performTraversals(ViewRoot.java:1258)
08-17 18:23:09.825: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(1608):     at android.view.ViewRoot.handleMessage(ViewRoot.java:1859)
08-17 18:23:09.825: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(1608):     at android.os.Handler.dispatchMessage(Handler.java:99)
08-17 18:23:09.825: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(1608):     at android.os.Looper.loop(Looper.java:130)
08-17 18:23:09.825: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(1608):     at android.app.ActivityThread.main(ActivityThread.java:3683)
08-17 18:23:09.825: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(1608):     at java.lang.reflect.Method.invokeNative(Native Method)
08-17 18:23:09.825: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(1608):     at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:507)
08-17 18:23:09.825: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(1608):     at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit$MethodAndArgsCaller.run(ZygoteInit.java:839)
08-17 18:23:09.825: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(1608):     at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit.main(ZygoteInit.java:597)
08-17 18:23:09.825: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(1608):     at dalvik.system.NativeStart.main(Native Method)

Answer 1

I faced the same problem when using EditText in Recyclerview. After a lot of struggle and trying different option i found out the after deleting the row when my keyboard is opened produces this issue. I solved it by force closing my keyboard and changing notifyItemRemoved(position) with notifyDataSetChanged().

Answer 2

Based on @Bruce answer, can resolve error with recyclerview like this:

@Override
public ViewHolder onCreateViewHolder(ViewGroup parent, int viewType) {

        View currentFocus = ((Activity)context).getCurrentFocus();
        if (currentFocus != null) {
            currentFocus.clearFocus();
        }
}

Answer 3

If none of the solutions suggested here apply to you...

I've experienced a similar error and noticed it was reported by my users' devices (after a crash) without any clear explanation on what was causing it (same as the log shown on the question) - more specifically the issue only happened on Samsung Galaxy (including S6) devices (but not on Nexus devices or others, which is why my testing initially failed to reveal the issue). So, first, it is worth checking if the issue is device specific or not.

What I later found is that when pressing the back button while a Samsung virtual keyboard was displayed on a text field, the application would crash throwing this error - but not always!

Indeed, the text field causing the crash also happened to be displayed within a scrollview with fillViewPort="true" enabled.

What I found is that removing the fillViewPort option from the scrollview would not conflict with the Samsung keyboard being displayed/hidden. I suspect the issue is partly due to the fact that Samsung keyboards are different virtual keyboards than the stock Nexus keyboards, which is why only a subset of my users were experiencing the issue and it would crash on their devices only.

As a general rule, and if none of the other solutions suggested here apply to you, I would check if the issue is device specific, and also attempt to simplify the view I am working on until I can find the "culprit component" (component and view that, I should add, wasn't reported in the crash logs - so I only stumbled on the specific view causing the issue by chance!).

Sorry I cannot be more specific, but I hope this gives some pointers for further investigation if someone experience a similar but unexplained issue.