Question

I’m trying to connect to a database on my server. I’ve only just started working with AsyncTask since it was recommend to me. Before that I had the HTTP request on the main UI thread which of course meant it didn’t work. It’s working a little better now but I’m still having problems. If my server is off I get a force close. If you look at my code below I included a toast to tell me if the connection could not be established. However this is not showing.

Is there something I need to change in order to get it to stop Force closing and just show the toast?

When I have my server on and the database is up I looked at the logcat and my android app does retrieve the data but it’s in the logcat and not presented on the page. Some of this code is from tutorials and searching google so I know that the “// PARSING DATA” bit only counts the length of the data at the moment and nothing else. I presume that’s where I need to add the code for it to be displayed. Just goes to show how new this is all to me.

Really getting frustrated by all this which is definitely not helping :(.

Here is my code:

package com.android.history;

import java.io.BufferedReader;
import java.io.InputStream;
import java.io.InputStreamReader;
import java.util.ArrayList;

import org.apache.http.HttpEntity;
import org.apache.http.HttpResponse;
import org.apache.http.NameValuePair;
import org.apache.http.ParseException;
import org.apache.http.client.HttpClient;
import org.apache.http.client.entity.UrlEncodedFormEntity;
import org.apache.http.client.methods.HttpPost;
import org.apache.http.impl.client.DefaultHttpClient;
import org.json.JSONArray;
import org.json.JSONException;
import org.json.JSONObject;

import android.app.Activity;
import android.os.AsyncTask;
import android.os.Bundle;
import android.util.Log;
import android.widget.Toast;

public class CurrentSeasonDrivers extends Activity {

public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
    setContentView(R.layout.currentseason_drivers);

    new HttpTask().execute();

}

private static class HttpTask extends AsyncTask<Void, Void, Void> {
    @Override
    protected void onPreExecute() {

    }

    @Override
    protected Void doInBackground(Void... params) {
        doStuff();

        return null;
    }

    public static void doStuff() {
        JSONArray jArray;
        String result = null;
        InputStream is = null;
        StringBuilder sb = null;
        HttpResponse response;
        HttpEntity entity;

        ArrayList<NameValuePair> nameValuePairs = new ArrayList<NameValuePair>();
        // HTTP POST REQUEST
        try {
            HttpClient httpclient = new DefaultHttpClient();

            HttpPost httppost = new HttpPost("http://192.168.0.13/testdatabase.php");

            httppost.setEntity(new UrlEncodedFormEntity(nameValuePairs));
            response = httpclient.execute(httppost);

            entity = response.getEntity();

            is = entity.getContent();

        } catch (Exception e) {
            Log.e("log_tag", "Error in http connection" + e.toString());
            Toast.makeText(null, "Could not connect to server", Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show();
        }

        // CONVERT RESPONSE TO STRING
        try {
            BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(is, "iso-8859-1"), 8);
            sb = new StringBuilder();
            sb.append(reader.readLine() + "\n");

            String line;
            while ((line = reader.readLine()) != null) {
                sb.append(line);
            }
            is.close();
            result = sb.toString();

            Log.i("json string", result);
        } catch (Exception e) {
            Log.e("log_tag", "Error converting result " + e.toString());
        }


        // PARSING DATA
        String drivername;
        String drivesfor;
        try {
            jArray = new JSONArray(result);
            JSONObject json_data = null;

            System.out.println("Length " + jArray.length());
            Log.d("DB", "Length " + jArray.length());

            for (int i = 0; i < jArray.length(); i++) {

                System.out.println("counter " + i);
                json_data = jArray.getJSONObject(i);
                drivername = json_data.getString("Driver_full_name");
                drivesfor = json_data.getString("Drives_for");

                System.out.println("Drives_for" + drivesfor);
            }
        } catch (JSONException e1) {
            Log.d("DB", "Error somewhere");
        } catch (ParseException e1) {
            e1.printStackTrace();
        }
    }
}
}

Here are the errors in my log_cat:

08-22 12:26:39.405: E/log_tag(14327): Error in http connectionorg.apache.http.conn.HttpHostConnectException: Connection to http://192.168.0.13 refused
08-22 12:26:39.405: W/dalvikvm(14327): threadid=13: thread exiting with uncaught exception (group=0x40a051f8)
08-22 12:26:39.455: E/AndroidRuntime(14327): FATAL EXCEPTION: AsyncTask #2
08-22 12:26:39.455: E/AndroidRuntime(14327): java.lang.RuntimeException: An error occured while executing doInBackground()
08-22 12:26:39.455: E/AndroidRuntime(14327):    at android.os.AsyncTask$3.done(AsyncTask.java:278)
08-22 12:26:39.455: E/AndroidRuntime(14327):    at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask$Sync.innerSetException(FutureTask.java:273)
08-22 12:26:39.455: E/AndroidRuntime(14327):    at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.setException(FutureTask.java:124)
08-22 12:26:39.455: E/AndroidRuntime(14327):    at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask$Sync.innerRun(FutureTask.java:307)
08-22 12:26:39.455: E/AndroidRuntime(14327):    at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.run(FutureTask.java:137)
08-22 12:26:39.455: E/AndroidRuntime(14327):    at android.os.AsyncTask$SerialExecutor$1.run(AsyncTask.java:208)
08-22 12:26:39.455: E/AndroidRuntime(14327):    at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1076)
08-22 12:26:39.455: E/AndroidRuntime(14327):    at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:569)
08-22 12:26:39.455: E/AndroidRuntime(14327):    at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:856)
08-22 12:26:39.455: E/AndroidRuntime(14327): Caused by: java.lang.RuntimeException: Can't create handler inside thread that has not called Looper.prepare()
08-22 12:26:39.455: E/AndroidRuntime(14327):    at android.os.Handler.<init>(Handler.java:121)
08-22 12:26:39.455: E/AndroidRuntime(14327):    at android.widget.Toast$TN.<init>(Toast.java:317)
08-22 12:26:39.455: E/AndroidRuntime(14327):    at android.widget.Toast.<init>(Toast.java:91)
08-22 12:26:39.455: E/AndroidRuntime(14327):    at android.widget.Toast.makeText(Toast.java:233)
08-22 12:26:39.455: E/AndroidRuntime(14327):    at com.android.history.CurrentSeasonDrivers$HttpTask.doStuff(CurrentSeasonDrivers.java:74)
08-22 12:26:39.455: E/AndroidRuntime(14327):    at com.android.history.CurrentSeasonDrivers$HttpTask.doInBackground(CurrentSeasonDrivers.java:44)
08-22 12:26:39.455: E/AndroidRuntime(14327):    at com.android.history.CurrentSeasonDrivers$HttpTask.doInBackground(CurrentSeasonDrivers.java:1)
08-22 12:26:39.455: E/AndroidRuntime(14327):    at android.os.AsyncTask$2.call(AsyncTask.java:264)
08-22 12:26:39.455: E/AndroidRuntime(14327):    at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask$Sync.innerRun(FutureTask.java:305)
08-22 12:26:39.455: E/AndroidRuntime(14327):    ... 5 more

Answer 1

doInBackground runs on a separate thread. You cannot show a Toast from a chaild thread.

use the following code instead, inside the catch block.

 runOnUiThread(new Runnable() {          
   public void run() {                 
    Toast.makeText(null, "Could not connect to server", Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show();     
 }            
});