Some 3rd party widgets stop updating after application upgrade

Question

My application hosts user installed widgets, same as a launcher application.

Once I bind the widget, everything works fine. Widgets are created, updated automatically, I can click to navigate inner views.

Everything keeps working fine, until I update my application from Play store (or manually with a signed APK).

After the update, the widgets still show but they won't update anymore. Some widgets function when I click on them but the view is stuck and never gets updated until I re-create the widget (get a new ID and bind it).

I tried forcing an update using

Intent intent = new Intent();
intent.setAction(AppWidgetManager.ACTION_APPWIDGET_UPDATE);
intent.setComponent(appWidgetInfo.provider);
intent.putExtra(AppWidgetManager.EXTRA_APPWIDGET_IDS, new int[]
                {appWidgetId});
context.sendBroadcast(intent);

but that doesn't help...

I wanted to try a forced update on click but I couldn't find any way to get the widget's RemoteViews (as this is not my widget, I just host it).

RemoteViews views = 
      new RemoteViews(context.getPackageName(),R.layout.mywidget_layout);

Intent updateIntent = new Intent();
updateIntent.setAction(AppWidgetManager.ACTION_APPWIDGET_UPDATE);
updateIntent.putExtra(myWidgetProvider.WIDGET_IDS_KEY, ids);
PendingIntent pendingIntent = PendingIntent.getBroadcast(
      context, 0, updateIntent, PendingIntent.FLAG_UPDATE_CURRENT);

views.setOnClickPendingIntent(R.id.view_container, pendingIntent);

Also implemented an AppWidgetProvider to listen to widgets' ID changes (APPWIDGET_HOST_RESTORED) but it doesn't get called on my application update.

My next step would be to re-create all widgets after application update, but I really prefer not to do so.

Would appreciate any help!

Answer 1

Solved.

The last thing I wanted to do, was probably the first thing I should have tried. I moved on to re-creating the widgets and I found that I don't have to fully re-create them, just re-call bindAppWidgetIdIfAllowed() with the same Widget ID I already have.

The method will return true if everything is still OK and if not, the widget may not be installed anymore or you need to trigger its configuration screen.