Android “Only the original thread that created a v

Question

I've built a simple music player in Android. The view for each song contains a SeekBar, implemented like this:

public class Song extends Activity implements OnClickListener,Runnable {
    private SeekBar progress;
    private MediaPlayer mp;

    // ...

    private ServiceConnection onService = new ServiceConnection() {
          public void onServiceConnected(ComponentName className,
            IBinder rawBinder) {
              appService = ((MPService.LocalBinder)rawBinder).getService(); // service that handles the MediaPlayer
              progress.setVisibility(SeekBar.VISIBLE);
              progress.setProgress(0);
              mp = appService.getMP();
              appService.playSong(title);
              progress.setMax(mp.getDuration());
              new Thread(Song.this).start();
          }
          public void onServiceDisconnected(ComponentName classname) {
              appService = null;
          }
    };

    public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        setContentView(R.layout.song);

        // ...

        progress = (SeekBar) findViewById(R.id.progress);

        // ...
    }

    public void run() {
    int pos = 0;
    int total = mp.getDuration();
    while (mp != null && pos<total) {
        try {
            Thread.sleep(1000);
            pos = appService.getSongPosition();
        } catch (InterruptedException e) {
            return;
        } catch (Exception e) {
            return;
        }
        progress.setProgress(pos);
    }
}

This works fine. Now I want a timer counting the seconds/minutes of the progress of the song. So I put a TextView in the layout, get it with findViewById() in onCreate(), and put this in run() after progress.setProgress(pos):

String time = String.format("%d:%d",
            TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS.toMinutes(pos),
            TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS.toSeconds(pos),
            TimeUnit.MINUTES.toSeconds(TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS.toMinutes(
                    pos))
            );
currentTime.setText(time);  // currentTime = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.current_time);

But that last line gives me the exception:

android.view.ViewRoot$CalledFromWrongThreadException: Only the original thread that created a view hierarchy can touch its views.

Yet I'm doing basically the same thing here as I'm doing with the SeekBar - creating the view in onCreate, then touching it in run() - and it doesn't give me this complaint.

Answer 1

I had a similar issue, and my solution is ugly, but it works:

void showCode() {
    hideRegisterMessage(); // Hides view 
    final Handler handler = new Handler();
    handler.postDelayed(new Runnable() {
        @Override
        public void run() {
            showRegisterMessage(); // Shows view
        }
    }, 3000); // After 3 seconds
}

Answer 2

For me the issue was that I was calling onProgressUpdate() explicitly from my code. This shouldn't be done. I called publishProgress() instead and that resolved the error.

Answer 3

In my case, I have EditText in Adaptor, and it's already in the UI thread. However, when this Activity loads, it's crashes with this error.

My solution is I need to remove <requestFocus /> out from EditText in XML.

Answer 4

In my case, the caller calls too many times in short time will get this error, I simply put elpased time checking to do nothing if too short, e.g. ignore if function get called less than 0.5 second:

    private long mLastClickTime = 0;

    public boolean foo() {
        if ( (SystemClock.elapsedRealtime() - mLastClickTime) < 500) {
            return false;
        }
        mLastClickTime = SystemClock.elapsedRealtime();

        //... do ui update
    }

Answer 5

If you do not want to use runOnUiThread API, you can in fact implement AsynTask for the operations that takes some seconds to complete. But in that case, also after processing your work in doinBackground(), you need to return the finished view in onPostExecute(). The Android implementation allows only main UI thread to interact with views.

Answer 6

I've been in this situation, but I found a solution with the Handler Object.

In my case, I want to update a ProgressDialog with the observer pattern. My view implements observer and overrides the update method.

So, my main thread create the view and another thread call the update method that update the ProgressDialop and....:

Only the original thread that created a view hierarchy can touch its views.

It's possible to solve the problem with the Handler Object.

Below, different parts of my code:

public class ViewExecution extends Activity implements Observer{

    static final int PROGRESS_DIALOG = 0;
    ProgressDialog progressDialog;
    int currentNumber;

    public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {

        currentNumber = 0;
        final Button launchPolicyButton =  ((Button) this.findViewById(R.id.launchButton));
        launchPolicyButton.setOnClickListener(new OnClickListener() {

            @Override
            public void onClick(View v) {
                showDialog(PROGRESS_DIALOG);
            }
        });
    }

    @Override
    protected Dialog onCreateDialog(int id) {
        switch(id) {
        case PROGRESS_DIALOG:
            progressDialog = new ProgressDialog(this);
            progressDialog.setProgressStyle(ProgressDialog.STYLE_HORIZONTAL);
            progressDialog.setMessage("Loading");
            progressDialog.setCancelable(true);
            return progressDialog;
        default:
            return null;
        }
    }

    @Override
    protected void onPrepareDialog(int id, Dialog dialog) {
        switch(id) {
        case PROGRESS_DIALOG:
            progressDialog.setProgress(0);
        }

    }

    // Define the Handler that receives messages from the thread and update the progress
    final Handler handler = new Handler() {
        public void handleMessage(Message msg) {
            int current = msg.arg1;
            progressDialog.setProgress(current);
            if (current >= 100){
                removeDialog (PROGRESS_DIALOG);
            }
        }
    };

    // The method called by the observer (the second thread)
    @Override
    public void update(Observable obs, Object arg1) {

        Message msg = handler.obtainMessage();
        msg.arg1 = ++currentPluginNumber;
        handler.sendMessage(msg);
    }
}

This explanation can be found on this page, and you must read the "Example ProgressDialog with a second thread".