Android Widget stops working randomly

Question

I have been working with this problem for three days now and I've looked at every single question on here for an answer. I have a widget with a button on it and all I would like it to do is start a service everytime it is clicked. The problem is that the button stops working randomly. I can't recreate it at all and I have no idea what causes it. My service calls stopSelf(); but I have had this problem with a broadcast receiver also so I believe the problem to be in the widget and not in the service. Here is the code

public void onUpdate(Context context, AppWidgetManager appWidgetManager, int[]     appWidgetIds) 
{

Log.i("Widget", "onUpdate");

final int N = appWidgetIds.length;

    for (int i=0; i<N; i++) 
    {

        int appWidgetId = appWidgetIds[i];

        Log.i("Widget", "onUpdateLoop");


        Intent intent = new Intent(context, ServiceWidgetAction.class);
        intent.setAction(Long.toString(System.currentTimeMillis()));
        intent.setFlags(Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK);

        PendingIntent pendingIntent = PendingIntent
                .getService(context, 0, intent, PendingIntent.FLAG_UPDATE_CURRENT);

        RemoteViews views = new RemoteViews(context.getPackageName(), 
               R.layout.widget);

        views.setOnClickPendingIntent(R.id.widgetButton, pendingIntent);

        views.setTextViewText(
                R.id.widgetTextView,
                "Some text");

        appWidgetManager.updateAppWidget(appWidgetId, views);

    }

}

I've checked this code over and over and I have no idea why it is doing this. It does this on 3 separate phones and I can't recreate it. I've tried force stopping the app, clearing it from a task manager adding new widgets etc. to get the widget to stop working and it won't. However when I woke up this morning the widget no longer works. Any help would be GREATLY appreciated.

Answer 1

Did you install your widget into the SD Card?

Google recommends to install all widget, alarm and receiver app types into the internal storage, due system sync problems like this.

Maybe not the solution, but a "must check" ;)

android:installLocation="internalOnly"

Answer 2

I ended up figuring out the problem. I was updating the widget from other places in the app and I did not have the complete code for each one. In other words my app updated the textviews in the widget like this

    RemoteViews views = new RemoteViews(context.getPackageName(), 
           R.layout.widget);

    views.setTextViewText(
            R.id.widgetTextView,
            "Some text");

    appWidgetManager.updateAppWidget(appWidgetId, views);

But it needed the entire code to keep the button registered like this:

    Intent intent = new Intent(context, ServiceWidgetAction.class);
    intent.setAction(Long.toString(System.currentTimeMillis()));
    intent.setFlags(Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK);

    PendingIntent pendingIntent = PendingIntent
            .getService(context, 0, intent, PendingIntent.FLAG_UPDATE_CURRENT);

    RemoteViews views = new RemoteViews(context.getPackageName(), 
           R.layout.widget);

    views.setOnClickPendingIntent(R.id.widgetButton, pendingIntent);

    views.setTextViewText(
            R.id.widgetTextView,
            "Some text");

    appWidgetManager.updateAppWidget(appWidgetId, views);

So bottom line is whenever you update a widget from within your app, make sure it looks exactly like the code in the widget itself. Don't leave anything out.