"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 );
    }
}

Set the theme before super.onCreate(); When the super is called the default theme is loaded thus it will give you that Exception. — Ionut Negru
I'm seeing this in my unit tests too. I don't think this is a duplicate of the general question. I guess it's an issue with the MockContext. — murrayc
Using ActivityInstrumentationTestCase2 instead of ActivityUnitTestCase resolves this error in JUnit. But using ActivityInstrumentationTestCase2 for simple Unit Testing does not make sense to me. As of today(24th April 2015) there seems to be NO solution to test an activity which supports v7-appcompat ActionBar with ActivityUnitTestCase!! — Raghu

shalafi shalafi · Accepted Answer · 2014-05-26T08:20:03

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

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

2 Answers