Issue with Activity Class in the Crystalball Manifest

Okay so I added it and the error message went away. However, the crystalball app is now just crashing. I restarted the project and got as far as importing the textview and the button and using the findViewById() function. However, the viewText1 and Button ids did not show up. Eclipse added them to R.java to fix the problem. It still is crashing every time I start the emulator even though there are no error messages

09-03 14:28:17.943: D/AndroidRuntime(1226): Shutting down VM 09-03 14:28:18.013: W/dalvikvm(1226): threadid=1: thread exiting with uncaught exception (group=0x414c4700) 09-03 14:28:18.053: E/AndroidRuntime(1226): FATAL EXCEPTION: main 09-03 14:28:18.053: E/AndroidRuntime(1226): java.lang.RuntimeException: Unable to instantiate activity ComponentInfo{com.example.crystalball/com.example.crystalball.MainActivity}: java.lang.NullPointerException 09-03 14:28:18.053: E/AndroidRuntime(1226): at android.app.ActivityThread.performLaunchActivity(ActivityThread.java:2137) 09-03 14:28:18.053: E/AndroidRuntime(1226): at android.app.ActivityThread.handleLaunchActivity(ActivityThread.java:2261) 09-03 14:28:18.053: E/AndroidRuntime(1226): at android.app.ActivityThread.access$600(ActivityThread.java:141) 09-03 14:28:18.053: E/AndroidRuntime(1226): at android.app.ActivityThread$H.handleMessage(ActivityThread.java:1256) 09-03 14:28:18.053: E/AndroidRuntime(1226): at android.os.Handler.dispatchMessage(Handler.java:99) 09-03 14:28:18.053: E/AndroidRuntime(1226): at android.os.Looper.loop(Looper.java:137) 09-03 14:28:18.053: E/AndroidRuntime(1226): at android.app.ActivityThread.main(ActivityThread.java:5103) 09-03 14:28:18.053: E/AndroidRuntime(1226): at java.lang.reflect.Method.invokeNative(Native Method) 09-03 14:28:18.053: E/AndroidRuntime(1226): at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:525) 09-03 14:28:18.053: E/AndroidRuntime(1226): at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit$MethodAndArgsCaller.run(ZygoteInit.java:737) 09-03 14:28:18.053: E/AndroidRuntime(1226): at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit.main(ZygoteInit.java:553) 09-03 14:28:18.053: E/AndroidRuntime(1226): at dalvik.system.NativeStart.main(Native Method) 09-03 14:28:18.053: E/AndroidRuntime(1226): Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException 09-03 14:28:18.053: E/AndroidRuntime(1226): at android.app.Activity.findViewById(Activity.java:1853) 09-03 14:28:18.053: E/AndroidRuntime(1226): at com.example.crystalball.MainActivity.<init>(MainActivity.java:17) 09-03 14:28:18.053: E/AndroidRuntime(1226): at java.lang.Class.newInstanceImpl(Native Method) 09-03 14:28:18.053: E/AndroidRuntime(1226): at java.lang.Class.newInstance(Class.java:1130) 09-03 14:28:18.053: E/AndroidRuntime(1226): at android.app.Instrumentation.newActivity(Instrumentation.java:1061) 09-03 14:28:18.053: E/AndroidRuntime(1226): at android.app.ActivityThread.performLaunchActivity(ActivityThread.java:2128) 09-03 14:28:18.053: E/AndroidRuntime(1226): ... 11 more

Okay, it looks like you might be using the wrong ID in the findViewById() method. Check out this excerpt from that log:

Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException 09-03 14:28:18.053: E/AndroidRuntime(1226): at android.app.Activity.findViewById(Activity.java:1853) 09-03 14:28:18.053: E/AndroidRuntime(1226): at com.example.crystalball.MainActivity.(MainActivity.java:17)

That last part tells you the error is occurring on line 17 in your MainActivity.java file. Can you paste in all that code here? Make sure the ID matches the ID in your layout (you might need to check the XML view), and also make sure you are using the format R.id.textView1 (or whatever the appropriate name is).

In your earlier question you wrote 'viewText1'...did you maybe just switch up the parts of the ID?

Okay the format is correct.

Both lines say: TextView answerLabel = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.textView); Button getAnswerButton = (Button) findViewById(R.id.button1);

I removed the TextView line and it still crashed, but once I also removed the Button line, it is no longer crashing... Going to try to remove and re-add the textview and the button in the graphical layout and then add the views. But that's really helpful to know how to figure out what line is causing the crash. I'll let you know if it works

package com.example.crystalball;

import android.app.Activity;
import android.os.Bundle;
import android.view.Menu;
import android.widget.Button;
import android.widget.TextView;


public class MainActivity extends Activity {

    @Override
    protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        setContentView(R.layout.activity_main);
    }

    TextView answerLabel = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.textView1);
    Button getAnswerButton = (Button) findViewById(R.id.button1);

    @Override
    public boolean onCreateOptionsMenu(Menu menu) {
        // Inflate the menu; this adds items to the action bar if it is present.
        getMenuInflater().inflate(R.menu.main, menu);
        return true;
    }

}

All the ids are correct... what am I doing wrong?

Sorry for my delayed response here! I've been on holiday for a long weekend. It is quite possible that something corrupted your R.java file. It looks like you are missing the import statement for your R class in your MainActivity file. It would look something like this:

import com.example.crystalball.R;

Here are a few forum posts that talk about issues with the R.java file:

• https://teamtreehouse.com/forum/crystal-ball-animation-android
• https://teamtreehouse.com/forum/accessing-views-in-code
• https://teamtreehouse.com/forum/help-eclipse-not-creating-new-android-application-correctly

I've never seen this latest error, but it sounds like a problem with your emulator. What happens if you try the solutions in this StackOverflow question: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/13765122/android-emulator-spams-logcat-with-service-com-android-exchange-exchangeservice?

Boy, this just isn't going to be easy for you, is it? :)

Next, can you paste in all your code from MainActivity.java (including the import statements) and activity_main.xml? You can also zip up your entire project and email it to help@teamtreehouse.com.

Any idea of what is wrong with my code?

Oh my goodness - this took me so long to troubleshoot! The error reporting in Android Studio is not as helpful as Eclipse. Not yet, at least.

Your TextView line is simply in the wrong place. Right now it's just floating in the nowhere space between methods. It needs to be inside the onCreate() method, meaning it needs to be before the right curly brace that matches the left curly brace that starts the block of code that makes up the method.

YOU ARE AWESOME!!!! Holy crap. Wow. It works. God, that was frustrating... thank you so much for all the help. This only reaffirms why I picked Treehouse over other sites. Thank you again!