java.lang.NullPointerException at android.webkit.WebViewClassic.setBaseLayer(WebViewClassic.java:5377)

Question

I published an Android application that uses ACRA for crash reporting. Now I got a strange crash report:

java.lang.NullPointerException
at android.webkit.WebViewClassic.setBaseLayer(WebViewClassic.java:5377)
at android.webkit.WebViewClassic.setNewPicture(WebViewClassic.java:10781)
at android.webkit.WebViewClassic$PrivateHandler.handleMessage(WebViewClassic.java:10012)
at android.os.Handler.dispatchMessage(Handler.java:99)
at android.os.Looper.loop(Looper.java:137)
at android.app.ActivityThread.main(ActivityThread.java:4898)
at java.lang.reflect.Method.invokeNative(Native Method)
at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:511)
at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit$MethodAndArgsCaller.run(ZygoteInit.java:1006)
at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit.main(ZygoteInit.java:773)
at dalvik.system.NativeStart.main(Native Method)

The report was sent from a Samsung Galaxy S3 (GT-I9300) running Android 4.1.1. The report is strange (from my point of view) because my app doesn't use a WebView (no display of web pages in the whole app, no HTML handling at all). Furthermore the stack trace doesn't include any of my packages. Certainly I cannot reproduce the crash.

Has anybody else encountered this (or a very similar) stack trace? Why is this exception thrown? And what can I do to avoid the exception? Any help is really appreciated.

Answer 1

This can be caused due to use of external ad networks that may use WebViews. This is a problem that needs to be addressed by the ad network maintainers. Apart from bringing it their attention, there is really nothing you can do about this short of removing the offending providers' ads from your application.