How to handle screen orientation change when progr

Question

My program does some network activity in a background thread. Before starting, it pops up a progress dialog. The dialog is dismissed on the handler. This all works fine, except when screen orientation changes while the dialog is up (and the background thread is going). At this point the app either crashes, or deadlocks, or gets into a weird stage where the app does not work at all until all the threads have been killed.

How can I handle the screen orientation change gracefully?

The sample code below matches roughly what my real program does:

public class MyAct extends Activity implements Runnable {
    public ProgressDialog mProgress;

    // UI has a button that when pressed calls send

    public void send() {
         mProgress = ProgressDialog.show(this, "Please wait", 
                      "Please wait", 
                      true, true);
        Thread thread = new Thread(this);
        thread.start();
    }

    public void run() {
        Thread.sleep(10000);
        Message msg = new Message();
        mHandler.sendMessage(msg);
    }

    private final Handler mHandler = new Handler() {
        @Override
        public void handleMessage(Message msg) {
            mProgress.dismiss();
        }
    };
}

Stack:

E/WindowManager(  244): Activity MyAct has leaked window com.android.internal.policy.impl.PhoneWindow$DecorView@433b7150 that was originally added here
E/WindowManager(  244): android.view.WindowLeaked: Activity MyAct has leaked window com.android.internal.policy.impl.PhoneWindow$DecorView@433b7150 that was originally added here
E/WindowManager(  244):     at android.view.ViewRoot.<init>(ViewRoot.java:178)
E/WindowManager(  244):     at android.view.WindowManagerImpl.addView(WindowManagerImpl.java:147)
E/WindowManager(  244):     at android.view.WindowManagerImpl.addView(WindowManagerImpl.java:90)
E/WindowManager(  244):     at android.view.Window$LocalWindowManager.addView(Window.java:393)
E/WindowManager(  244):     at android.app.Dialog.show(Dialog.java:212)
E/WindowManager(  244):     at android.app.ProgressDialog.show(ProgressDialog.java:103)
E/WindowManager(  244):     at android.app.ProgressDialog.show(ProgressDialog.java:91)
E/WindowManager(  244):     at MyAct.send(MyAct.java:294)
E/WindowManager(  244):     at MyAct$4.onClick(MyAct.java:174)
E/WindowManager(  244):     at android.view.View.performClick(View.java:2129)
E/WindowManager(  244):     at android.view.View.onTouchEvent(View.java:3543)
E/WindowManager(  244):     at android.widget.TextView.onTouchEvent(TextView.java:4664)
E/WindowManager(  244):     at android.view.View.dispatchTouchEvent(View.java:3198)

I have tried to dismiss the progress dialog in onSaveInstanceState, but that just prevents an immediate crash. The background thread is still going, and the UI is in partially drawn state. Need to kill the whole app before it starts working again.

Answer 1

Edit: Google engineers do not recommend this approach, as described by Dianne Hackborn (a.k.a. hackbod) in this StackOverflow post. Check out this blog post for more information.

---

You have to add this to the activity declaration in the manifest:

android:configChanges="orientation|screenSize"

so it looks like

<activity android:label="@string/app_name" 
        android:configChanges="orientation|screenSize|keyboardHidden" 
        android:name=".your.package">

The matter is that the system destroys the activity when a change in the configuration occurs. See ConfigurationChanges.

So putting that in the configuration file avoids the system to destroy your activity. Instead it invokes the onConfigurationChanged(Configuration) method.

Answer 2

I came up with a rock-solid solution for these issues that conforms with the 'Android Way' of things. I have all my long-running operations using the IntentService pattern.

That is, my activities broadcast intents, the IntentService does the work, saves the data in the DB and then broadcasts sticky intents. The sticky part is important, such that even if the Activity was paused during during the time after the user initiated the work and misses the real time broadcast from the IntentService we can still respond and pick up the data from the calling Activity. ProgressDialogs can work with this pattern quite nicely with onSaveInstanceState().

Basically, you need to save a flag that you have a progress dialog running in the saved instance bundle. Do not save the progress dialog object because this will leak the entire Activity. To have a persistent handle to the progress dialog, I store it as a weak reference in the application object. On orientation change or anything else that causes the Activity to pause (phone call, user hits home etc.) and then resume, I dismiss the old dialog and recreate a new dialog in the newly created Activity.

For indefinite progress dialogs this is easy. For progress bar style, you have to put the last known progress in the bundle and whatever information you're using locally in the activity to keep track of the progress. On restoring the progress, you'll use this information to re-spawn the progress bar in the same state as before and then update based on the current state of things.

So to summarize, putting long-running tasks into an IntentService coupled with judicious use of onSaveInstanceState() allows you to efficiently keep track of dialogs and restore then across the Activity life-cycle events. Relevant bits of Activity code are below. You'll also need logic in your BroadcastReceiver to handle Sticky intents appropriately, but that is beyond the scope of this.

public void doSignIn(View view) {
    waiting=true;
    AppClass app=(AppClass) getApplication();
    String logingon=getString(R.string.signon);
    app.Dialog=new WeakReference<ProgressDialog>(ProgressDialog.show(AddAccount.this, "", logingon, true));
    ...
}

@Override
protected void onSaveInstanceState(Bundle saveState) {
    super.onSaveInstanceState(saveState);
    saveState.putBoolean("waiting",waiting);
}

@Override
public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
    if(savedInstanceState!=null) {
        restoreProgress(savedInstanceState);    
    }
    ...
}

private void restoreProgress(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    waiting=savedInstanceState.getBoolean("waiting");
    if (waiting) {
        AppClass app=(AppClass) getApplication();
        ProgressDialog refresher=(ProgressDialog) app.Dialog.get();
        refresher.dismiss();
        String logingon=getString(R.string.signon);
        app.Dialog=new WeakReference<ProgressDialog>(ProgressDialog.show(AddAccount.this, "", logingon, true));
    }
}

Answer 3

The trick is to show/dismiss the dialog within AsyncTask during onPreExecute/onPostExecute as usual, though in case of orientation-change create/show a new instance of the dialog in the activity and pass its reference to the task.

public class MainActivity extends Activity {
    private Button mButton;
    private MyTask mTask = null;

    @Override
    public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        setContentView(R.layout.main);

        MyTask task = (MyTask) getLastNonConfigurationInstance();
        if(task != null){
            mTask = task;
            mTask.mContext = this;
            mTask.mDialog = ProgressDialog.show(this, "", "", true);        
        }

        mButton = (Button) findViewById(R.id.button1);
        mButton.setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener(){
            public void onClick(View v){
                mTask = new MyTask(MainActivity.this);
                mTask.execute();
            }
        });
    }


    @Override
    public Object onRetainNonConfigurationInstance() {
        String str = "null";
        if(mTask != null){
            str = mTask.toString();
            mTask.mDialog.dismiss();
        }
        Toast.makeText(this, str, Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show();
        return mTask;
    }



    private class MyTask extends AsyncTask<Void, Void, Void>{
        private ProgressDialog mDialog;
        private MainActivity mContext;


        public MyTask(MainActivity context){
            super();
            mContext = context;
        }


        protected void onPreExecute() {
            mDialog = ProgressDialog.show(MainActivity.this, "", "", true);
        }

        protected void onPostExecute(Void result) {
            mContext.mTask = null;
            mDialog.dismiss();
        }


        @Override
        protected Void doInBackground(Void... params) {
            SystemClock.sleep(5000);
            return null;
        }       
    }
}

Answer 4

I discovered a solution to this that I haven't yet seen elsewhere. You can use a custom application object that knows if you have background tasks going, instead of trying to do this in the activity that gets destroyed and recreated on orientation change. I blogged about this in here.

Answer 5

If you maintain two layouts, all UI thread should be terminated.

If you use AsynTask, then you can easily call .cancel() method inside onDestroy() method of current activity.

@Override
protected void onDestroy (){
    removeDialog(DIALOG_LOGIN_ID); // remove loading dialog
    if (loginTask != null){
        if (loginTask.getStatus() != AsyncTask.Status.FINISHED)
            loginTask.cancel(true); //cancel AsyncTask
    }
    super.onDestroy();
}

For AsyncTask, read more in "Cancelling a task" section at here.

Update: Added condition to check status, as it can be only cancelled if it is in running state. Also note that the AsyncTask can only be executed one time.

Answer 6

I going to contribute my approach to handling this rotation issue. This may not be relevant to OP as he's not using AsyncTask, but maybe others will find it useful. It's pretty simple but it seems to do the job for me:

I have a login activity with a nested AsyncTask class called BackgroundLoginTask.

In my BackgroundLoginTask I don't do anything out of the ordinary except to add a null check upon calling ProgressDialog's dismiss:

@Override
protected void onPostExecute(Boolean result)
{    
if (pleaseWaitDialog != null)
            pleaseWaitDialog.dismiss();
[...]
}

This is to handle the case where the background task finishes while the Activity is not visible and, therefore, the progress dialog has already been dismissed by the onPause() method.

Next, in my parent Activity class, I create global static handles to my AsyncTask class and my ProgressDialog (the AsyncTask, being nested, can access these variables):

private static BackgroundLoginTask backgroundLoginTask;
private static ProgressDialog pleaseWaitDialog;

This serves two purposes: First, it allows my Activity to always access the AsyncTask object even from a new, post-rotated activity. Second, it allows my BackgroundLoginTask to access and dismiss the ProgressDialog even after a rotate.

Next, I add this to onPause(), causing the progress dialog to disappear when our Activity is leaving the foreground (preventing that ugly "force close" crash):

    if (pleaseWaitDialog != null)
    pleaseWaitDialog.dismiss();

Finally, I have the following in my onResume() method:

if ((backgroundLoginTask != null) && (backgroundLoginTask.getStatus() == Status.RUNNING))
        {
           if (pleaseWaitDialog != null)
             pleaseWaitDialog.show();
        }

This allows the Dialog to reappear after the Activity is recreated.

Here is the entire class:

public class NSFkioskLoginActivity extends NSFkioskBaseActivity {
    private static BackgroundLoginTask backgroundLoginTask;
    private static ProgressDialog pleaseWaitDialog;
    private Controller cont;

    // This is the app entry point.
    /** Called when the activity is first created. */
    @Override
    public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);

        if (CredentialsAvailableAndValidated())
        {
        //Go to main menu and don't run rest of onCreate method.
            gotoMainMenu();
            return;
        }
        setContentView(R.layout.login);
        populateStoredCredentials();   
    }

    //Save current progress to options when app is leaving foreground
    @Override
    public void onPause()
    {
        super.onPause();
        saveCredentialsToPreferences(false);
        //Get rid of progress dialog in the event of a screen rotation. Prevents a crash.
        if (pleaseWaitDialog != null)
        pleaseWaitDialog.dismiss();
    }

    @Override
    public void onResume()
    {
        super.onResume();
        if ((backgroundLoginTask != null) && (backgroundLoginTask.getStatus() == Status.RUNNING))
        {
           if (pleaseWaitDialog != null)
             pleaseWaitDialog.show();
        }
    }

    /**
     * Go to main menu, finishing this activity
     */
    private void gotoMainMenu()
    {
        startActivity(new Intent(getApplicationContext(), NSFkioskMainMenuActivity.class));
        finish();
    }

    /**
     * 
     * @param setValidatedBooleanTrue If set true, method will set CREDS_HAVE_BEEN_VALIDATED to true in addition to saving username/password.
     */
    private void saveCredentialsToPreferences(boolean setValidatedBooleanTrue)
    {
        SharedPreferences settings = getSharedPreferences(APP_PREFERENCES, MODE_PRIVATE);
        SharedPreferences.Editor prefEditor = settings.edit();
        EditText usernameText = (EditText) findViewById(R.id.editTextUsername);
        EditText pswText = (EditText) findViewById(R.id.editTextPassword);
        prefEditor.putString(USERNAME, usernameText.getText().toString());
        prefEditor.putString(PASSWORD, pswText.getText().toString());
        if (setValidatedBooleanTrue)
        prefEditor.putBoolean(CREDS_HAVE_BEEN_VALIDATED, true);
        prefEditor.commit();
    }

    /**
     * Checks if user is already signed in
     */
    private boolean CredentialsAvailableAndValidated() {
        SharedPreferences settings = getSharedPreferences(APP_PREFERENCES,
                MODE_PRIVATE);
        if (settings.contains(USERNAME) && settings.contains(PASSWORD) && settings.getBoolean(CREDS_HAVE_BEEN_VALIDATED, false) == true)
         return true;   
        else
        return false;
    }

    //Populate stored credentials, if any available
    private void populateStoredCredentials()
    {
        SharedPreferences settings = getSharedPreferences(APP_PREFERENCES,
            MODE_PRIVATE);
        settings.getString(USERNAME, "");
       EditText usernameText = (EditText) findViewById(R.id.editTextUsername);
       usernameText.setText(settings.getString(USERNAME, ""));
       EditText pswText = (EditText) findViewById(R.id.editTextPassword);
       pswText.setText(settings.getString(PASSWORD, ""));
    }

    /**
     * Validate credentials in a seperate thread, displaying a progress circle in the meantime
     * If successful, save credentials in preferences and proceed to main menu activity
     * If not, display an error message
     */
    public void loginButtonClick(View view)
    {
        if (phoneIsOnline())
        {
        EditText usernameText = (EditText) findViewById(R.id.editTextUsername);
        EditText pswText = (EditText) findViewById(R.id.editTextPassword);
           //Call background task worker with username and password params
           backgroundLoginTask = new BackgroundLoginTask();
           backgroundLoginTask.execute(usernameText.getText().toString(), pswText.getText().toString());
        }
        else
        {
        //Display toast informing of no internet access
        String notOnlineMessage = getResources().getString(R.string.noNetworkAccessAvailable);
        Toast toast = Toast.makeText(getApplicationContext(), notOnlineMessage, Toast.LENGTH_SHORT);
        toast.show();
        }
    }

    /**
     * 
     * Takes two params: username and password
     *
     */
    public class BackgroundLoginTask extends AsyncTask<Object, String, Boolean>
    {       
       private Exception e = null;

       @Override
       protected void onPreExecute()
       {
           cont = Controller.getInstance();
           //Show progress dialog
           String pleaseWait = getResources().getString(R.string.pleaseWait);
           String commWithServer = getResources().getString(R.string.communicatingWithServer);
            if (pleaseWaitDialog == null)
              pleaseWaitDialog= ProgressDialog.show(NSFkioskLoginActivity.this, pleaseWait, commWithServer, true);

       }

        @Override
        protected Boolean doInBackground(Object... params)
        {
        try {
            //Returns true if credentials were valid. False if not. Exception if server could not be reached.
            return cont.validateCredentials((String)params[0], (String)params[1]);
        } catch (Exception e) {
            this.e=e;
            return false;
        }
        }

        /**
         * result is passed from doInBackground. Indicates whether credentials were validated.
         */
        @Override
        protected void onPostExecute(Boolean result)
        {
        //Hide progress dialog and handle exceptions
        //Progress dialog may be null if rotation has been switched
        if (pleaseWaitDialog != null)
             {
            pleaseWaitDialog.dismiss();
                pleaseWaitDialog = null;
             }

        if (e != null)
        {
         //Show toast with exception text
                String networkError = getResources().getString(R.string.serverErrorException);
                Toast toast = Toast.makeText(getApplicationContext(), networkError, Toast.LENGTH_SHORT);
            toast.show();
        }
        else
        {
            if (result == true)
            {
            saveCredentialsToPreferences(true);
            gotoMainMenu();
            }
            else
            {
            String toastText = getResources().getString(R.string.invalidCredentialsEntered);
                Toast toast = Toast.makeText(getApplicationContext(), toastText, Toast.LENGTH_SHORT);
            toast.show();
            } 
        }
        }

    }
}

I am by no means a seasoned Android developer, so feel free to comment.