"You need to use a Theme.Appcompat theme..." when testing ActionBarActivity, but I am

Question

I have a problem when testing an app which uses ActionBarActivity from android-support-v7-appcompat via Android JUnit test in Eclipse. When running in an emulator or device everything seems to work fine.

I tried using a mock application as in ActivityUnitTestCase and startActivity with ActionBarActivity and changed the parent theme in values-v11 etc. as suggested in ActionBarCompat: java.lang.IllegalStateException: You need to use a Theme.AppCompat but it still does not work.

You need to use a Theme.AppCompat theme (or descendant) with this activity does not give an answer either, als the person asking the question neither had an Theme.AppCompat specified in his manifest (which I do), nor did he really want to extend ActionBarActivity (which I do). His solution was to simply extend Activity instead.

What am I doing wrong?

This is the error I get (Failure-Trace from the Junit-Window):

java.lang.IllegalStateException: You need to use a Theme.AppCompat theme (or descendant) with this activity.
at android.support.v7.app.ActionBarActivityDelegate.onCreate(ActionBarActivityDelegate.java:108)
at android.support.v7.app.ActionBarActivityDelegateICS.onCreate(ActionBarActivityDelegateICS.java:57)
at android.support.v7.app.ActionBarActivity.onCreate(ActionBarActivity.java:98)
at android.hello.HelloWorldActivity.onCreate(HelloWorldActivity.java:14)
at android.app.Activity.performCreate(Activity.java:5104)
at android.app.Instrumentation.callActivityOnCreate(Instrumentation.java:1080)
at android.test.ActivityUnitTestCase.startActivity(ActivityUnitTestCase.java:158)
at android.hello.test.HelloWorldActivityTest.setUp(HelloWorldActivityTest.java:26)
at android.test.AndroidTestRunner.runTest(AndroidTestRunner.java:190)
at android.test.AndroidTestRunner.runTest(AndroidTestRunner.java:175)
at android.test.InstrumentationTestRunner.onStart(InstrumentationTestRunner.java:555)
at android.app.Instrumentation$InstrumentationThread.run(Instrumentation.java:1661)

HelloWorldActivity.java

package android.hello;

import android.support.v7.app.ActionBar;
import android.support.v7.app.ActionBarActivity;
import android.app.Activity;
import android.os.Bundle;
import android.widget.TextView;

public class HelloWorldActivity extends ActionBarActivity {
    @Override
    public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        setContentView(R.layout.main);
        TextView tv = (TextView) findViewById(android.hello.R.id.tv);
        tv.setText("Hello, Android");

    }
}

HelloWorldApplication.java

package android.hello;

import android.app.Application;
import android.util.Log;

public class HelloWorldApplication extends Application {
    @Override
    public void onCreate() {
        super.onCreate();
        setTheme(R.style.Theme_AppCompat);
    }
}

Hello World Manifest:

...
<activity
    android:name=".HelloWorldActivity"
    android:label="@string/app_name" 
    android:theme="@style/Theme.AppCompat">
    ...
</activity>
....

From the test package:

HelloWorldActivityTest.java

package android.hello.test;

import android.hello.HelloWorldActivity;
import android.content.Intent;
import android.test.ActivityUnitTestCase;
import android.widget.TextView;

public class HelloWorldActivityTest extends ActivityUnitTestCase<HelloWorldActivity> {

    HelloWorldActivity helloWorldActivity; 
    TextView textView;

    public HelloWorldActivityTest() {
        super(HelloWorldActivity.class);
    }

    @Override
    protected void setUp() throws Exception {
        super.setUp();

        // Starts the MainActivity of ScanMe
        startActivity(new Intent(getInstrumentation().getTargetContext(),       HelloWorldActivity.class), null, null);

        // Reference to the MainActivity of ScanMe
        helloWorldActivity = (HelloWorldActivity)getActivity();

        // Reference to the code input-TextEdit of the MainActivity of ScanMe
        textView = (TextView) helloWorldActivity.findViewById(android.hello.R.id.tv);
    }

    @Override
    protected void tearDown() throws Exception {
        super.tearDown();
    }

    public void testPreconditions() throws Exception {
        assertNotNull(textView);
    }

    public void testInputCodeField(){
        String actual=textView.getText().toString();
        String expected = "Hello, Android";
        assertEquals(expected,actual );
    }
}

Answer 1

There are 2 things I'd try:

• Remove the setTheme from onCreate, it is redundant with the manifest and may lead to confusion
• Set the theme at Application instead of Activity level in the manifest

Answer 2

add android:theme="@style/Theme.AppCompat" under application in your manifest.xml