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

I've tried EVERYTHING. Spent days experimenting. I didn't want to block the activity from rotating. My scenario was:

1. A progress dialog showing dynamic information to the user. E.g.: "Connecting to server...", "Downloading data...", etc.
2. A thread doing the heavy stuff and updating the dialog
3. Updating the UI with the results at the end.

The problem was, when rotating the screen, every solution on the book failed. Even with the AsyncTask class, which is the correct Android way of dealing with this situations. When rotating the screen, the current Context that the starting thread is working with, is gone, and that messes up with the dialog that is showing. The problem was always the Dialog, no matter how many tricks I added to the code (passing new contexts to running threads, retaining thread states through rotations, etc...). The code complexity at the end was always huge and there was always something that could go wrong.

The only solution that worked for me was the Activity/Dialog trick. It's simple and genius and it's all rotation proof:

1. Instead of creating a Dialog and ask to show it, create an Activity that has been set in the manifest with android:theme="@android:style/Theme.Dialog". So, it just looks like a dialog.

2. Replace showDialog(DIALOG_ID) with startActivityForResult(yourActivityDialog, yourCode);

3. Use onActivityResult in the calling Activity to get the results from the executing thread (even the errors) and update the UI.

4. On your 'ActivityDialog', use threads or AsyncTask to execute long tasks and onRetainNonConfigurationInstance to save "dialog" state when rotating the screen.

This is fast and works fine. I still use dialogs for other tasks and the AsyncTask for something that doesn't require a constant dialog on screen. But with this scenario, I always go for the Activity/Dialog pattern.

And, I didn't try it, but it's even possible to block that Activity/Dialog from rotating, when the thread is running, speeding things up, while allowing the calling Activity to rotate.

Answer 2

I have done it like this:

    package com.palewar;
    import android.app.Activity;
    import android.app.ProgressDialog;
    import android.os.Bundle;
    import android.os.Handler;
    import android.os.Message;

    public class ThreadActivity extends Activity {


        static ProgressDialog dialog;
        private Thread downloadThread;
        final static Handler handler = new Handler() {

            @Override
            public void handleMessage(Message msg) {

                super.handleMessage(msg);

                dialog.dismiss();

            }

        };

        protected void onDestroy() {
    super.onDestroy();
            if (dialog != null && dialog.isShowing()) {
                dialog.dismiss();
                dialog = null;
            }

        }

        /** Called when the activity is first created. */
        @Override
        public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
            super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
            setContentView(R.layout.main);

            downloadThread = (Thread) getLastNonConfigurationInstance();
            if (downloadThread != null && downloadThread.isAlive()) {
                dialog = ProgressDialog.show(ThreadActivity.this, "",
                        "Signing in...", false);
            }

            dialog = ProgressDialog.show(ThreadActivity.this, "",
                    "Signing in ...", false);

            downloadThread = new MyThread();
            downloadThread.start();
            // processThread();
        }

        // Save the thread
        @Override
        public Object onRetainNonConfigurationInstance() {
            return downloadThread;
        }


        static public class MyThread extends Thread {
            @Override
            public void run() {

                try {
                    // Simulate a slow network
                    try {
                        new Thread().sleep(5000);
                    } catch (InterruptedException e) {
                        e.printStackTrace();
                    }
                    handler.sendEmptyMessage(0);

                } finally {

                }
            }
        }

    }

You can also try and let me know it works for you or not

Answer 3

Seems far too 'quick and dirty' to be true so please point out the flaws but what I found worked was...

Within the onPostExecute method of my AsyncTask, I simply wrapped the '.dismiss' for the progress dialog in a try/catch block (with an empty catch) and then simply ignored the exception that was raised. Seems wrong to do but appears there are no ill effects (at least for what I am doing subsequently which is to start another activity passing in the result of my long running query as an Extra)

Answer 4

I am a fresher in android and I tried this and it's worked.

public class loadTotalMemberByBranch extends AsyncTask<Void, Void,Void> {
        ProgressDialog progressDialog = new ProgressDialog(Login.this);
        int ranSucess=0;
        @Override
        protected void onPreExecute() {
            // TODO Auto-generated method stub
            super.onPreExecute();
            progressDialog.setTitle("");    
            progressDialog.isIndeterminate();
            progressDialog.setCancelable(false);
            progressDialog.show();
            setRequestedOrientation(ActivityInfo.SCREEN_ORIENTATION_NOSENSOR);

        }
        @Override
        protected Void doInBackground(Void... params) {
            // TODO Auto-generated method stub

            return null;
        }
        @Override
        protected void onPostExecute(Void result) {
            // TODO Auto-generated method stub
            super.onPostExecute(result);
            progressDialog.dismiss();
            setRequestedOrientation(ActivityInfo.SCREEN_ORIENTATION_NOSENSOR);
        }
}

Answer 5

I faced the same situation. What I did was get only one instance for my progress dialog in the entire application.

First, I created a DialogSingleton class to get only one instance (Singleton pattern)

public class DialogSingleton
{
    private static Dialog dialog;

    private static final Object mLock = new Object();
    private static DialogSingleton instance;

    private DialogSingleton()
    {

    }

    public static DialogSingleton GetInstance()
    {
        synchronized (mLock)
        {
            if(instance == null)
            {
                instance = new DialogSingleton();
            }

            return instance;
        }
    }

    public void DialogShow(Context context, String title)
    {
        if(!((Activity)context).isFinishing())
        {
            dialog = new ProgressDialog(context, 2);

            dialog.setCanceledOnTouchOutside(false);

            dialog.setTitle(title);

            dialog.show();
        }
    }

    public void DialogDismiss(Context context)
    {
        if(!((Activity)context).isFinishing() && dialog.isShowing())
        {
            dialog.dismiss();
        }
    }
}

As I show in this class, I have the progress dialog as attribute. Every time I need to show a progress dialog, I get the unique instance and create a new ProgressDialog.

DialogSingleton.GetInstance().DialogShow(this, "My title here!");

When I am done with the background task, I call again the unique instance and dismiss its dialog.

DialogSingleton.GetInstance().DialogDismiss(this);

I save the background task status in my shared preferences. When I rotate the screen, I ask if I have a task running for this activity: (onCreate)

if(Boolean.parseBoolean(preference.GetValue(IS_TASK_NAME_EXECUTED_KEY, "boolean").toString()))
{
    DialogSingleton.GetInstance().DialogShow(this, "Checking credentials!");
} // preference object gets the info from shared preferences (my own implementation to get and put data to shared preferences) and IS_TASK_NAME_EXECUTED_KEY is the key to save this flag (flag to know if this activity has a background task already running).

When I start running a background task:

preference.AddValue(IS_TASK_NAME_EXECUTED_KEY, true, "boolean");

DialogSingleton.GetInstance().DialogShow(this, "My title here!");

When I finish running a background task:

preference.AddValue(IS_TASK_NAME_EXECUTED_KEY, false, "boolean");

DialogSingleton.GetInstance().DialogDismiss(ActivityName.this);

I hope it helps.

Answer 6

This is a very old question that came up on the sidebar for some reason.

If the background task only needs to survive while the activity is in the foreground, the "new" solution is to host the background thread (or, preferably, AsyncTask) in a retained fragment, as described in this developer guide and numerous Q&As.

A retained fragment survives if the activity is destroyed for a configuration change, but not when the activity is destroyed in the background or back stack. Therefore, the background task should still be interrupted if isChangingConfigurations() is false in onPause().