MFMailComposeViewController dismisses right away

Question

The situation is the MFMailComposeViewController was going to be presented. I saw it was presented half-way done, but then it got dismissed.

This is the error:

_serviceViewControllerReady:error: Error Domain=_UIViewServiceInterfaceErrorDomain Code=3 "The operation couldn’t be completed. (_UIViewServiceInterfaceErrorDomain error 3.)"

This is my source code to present the MFMailComposeViewController:

-(void) MailExecute {
    if ([MFMailComposeViewController canSendMail]) 
    {
        MFMailComposeViewController *mailViewController = [[MFMailComposeViewController alloc] init];   
        mailViewController.mailComposeDelegate = self;
        [mailViewController setSubject:NSLocalizedString(@"Check this new look", @"")];
        [mailViewController setMessageBody: @"my new look" isHTML:YES];

        [self presentModalViewController:mailViewController animated:YES];

        [mailViewController release];
    }
    else 
    {
        UIAlertView *alertInternal = [[UIAlertView alloc]
                                      initWithTitle: NSLocalizedString(@"Notification", @"")
                                      message: NSLocalizedString(@"You have not configured your e-mail client.", @"")
                                      delegate: nil
                                      cancelButtonTitle:NSLocalizedString(@"OK", @"")
                                      otherButtonTitles:nil];
        [alertInternal show];
        [alertInternal release];
    }
}

The weird point is that sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn't. Please help me on this! I spend almost 1 working day to resolve this but no succeed.

Answer 1

This problem can occur when displaying a remote view controller -- a view controller run in another process -- as indicated by the UIViewService reference in the error message.

I've had this problem when displaying an SKStoreProductViewController, which is also a remote view controller. I'm not sure what the root cause is; the only thing that seemed to trigger it for me was presenting the view controller repeatedly.

For the SKStoreProductViewController I was able to check for this error in the completion block of the loadProductWithParameters:completionBlock: method. Does the MFMailComposeViewControllerDelegate give you a callback with an error about this? It may be that all you can do is listen for this error and show an error message to the user.

We should both probably file an apple radar about this.

Answer 2

Your code looks correct, and as stated the error message strongly suggests this has something to do with UIView proper (not MFMail specifically). The problem almost surely lies somewhere elsewhere within your code, and might be challenging to troubleshoot.

Some things to look for:

1. Other animations or view controller transitions/dismissals happening simultaneously or incorrectly (possibly like this)
2. Release/retain issues, of course

If none of that seems like the fix, try commenting-out everything else happening in the view controller that calls this method and see if it works then.

If you still can't get it working, present the simplest version you can of failing code so we can troubleshoot further. :)