Catch all exceptions from a thread in Android

Question

I would like to catch exceptions caused from any statement in an activity class so that I can prevent any crash. Testing all possible scenarios that the app may be used with is not possible. I would like to give an alert dialog or a textbox with a button within the app to report the issue but do not want the app to crash. So is there a way to do this?

I tried Throwing Exception at class level by using a constructor but that did not help. Try Catch cannot be done to every statement so what can be a good anti crash solution that can catch exceptions throughout whole of activity class?

Answer 1

Yes you can do this create a ExceptionHandler class and collect crash record..

 public class ExceptionHandler implements
        Thread.UncaughtExceptionHandler {
    private final Activity myContext;
    private final String LINE_SEPARATOR = "\n";

    public ExceptionHandler(Activity context) {
        myContext = context;
    }

    public void uncaughtException(Thread thread, Throwable exception) {
        StringWriter stackTrace = new StringWriter();
        exception.printStackTrace(new PrintWriter(stackTrace));
        StringBuilder errorReport = new StringBuilder();
        errorReport.append("************ CAUSE OF ERROR ************\n\n");
        errorReport.append(stackTrace.toString());

        errorReport.append("\n************ DEVICE INFORMATION ***********\n");
        errorReport.append("Brand: ");
        errorReport.append(Build.BRAND);
        errorReport.append(LINE_SEPARATOR);
        errorReport.append("Device: ");
        errorReport.append(Build.DEVICE);
        errorReport.append(LINE_SEPARATOR);
        errorReport.append("Model: ");
        errorReport.append(Build.MODEL);
        errorReport.append(LINE_SEPARATOR);
        errorReport.append("Id: ");
        errorReport.append(Build.ID);
        errorReport.append(LINE_SEPARATOR);
        errorReport.append("Product: ");
        errorReport.append(Build.PRODUCT);
        errorReport.append(LINE_SEPARATOR);
        errorReport.append("\n************ FIRMWARE ************\n");
        errorReport.append("SDK: ");
        errorReport.append(Build.VERSION.SDK);
        errorReport.append(LINE_SEPARATOR);
        errorReport.append("Release: ");
        errorReport.append(Build.VERSION.RELEASE);
        errorReport.append(LINE_SEPARATOR);
        errorReport.append("Incremental: ");
        errorReport.append(Build.VERSION.INCREMENTAL);
        errorReport.append(LINE_SEPARATOR);

        Intent intent = new Intent(myContext, CrashActivity.class); //start a new activity to show error message
        intent.putExtra("error", errorReport.toString());
        myContext.startActivity(intent);

        android.os.Process.killProcess(android.os.Process.myPid());
        System.exit(10);
    }
}

Now in your MainActivity initialize the ExceptionHandler using:

@Override
protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    // TODO Auto-generated method stub
    super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
    Thread.setDefaultUncaughtExceptionHandler(new ExceptionHandler(this));
    setContentView(R.layout.activity_main);
}