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

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.