findViewById() may produce NullPointerException

8
votes

I have many of these calls:

(ListView) getView().findViewById(R.id.main_list_view);
(TextView) getView().findViewById(R.id.items_no);
....

and AndroidStudio tells me that they may procude a NullPointerException:

Method invocation getView().findViewById(R.id.main_list_view) may produce java.lang.NullPointerException less... (Ctrl+F1)

This inspection analyzes method control and data flow to report possible conditions that are always true or false, expressions whose value is statically proven to be constant, and situations that can lead to nullability contract violations.

Variables, method parameters and return values marked as @Nullable or @NotNull are treated as nullable (or not-null, respectively) and used during the analysis to check nullability contracts, e.g. report possible NullPointerException errors.

More complex contracts can be defined using @Contract annotation, for example:

@Contract("_, null -> null") — method returns null if its second argument is null @Contract("_, null -> null; _, !null -> !null") — method returns null if its second argument is null and not-null otherwise

@Contract("true -> fail") — a typical assertFalse method which throws an exception if true is passed to it

The inspection can be configured to use custom @Nullable @NotNull annotations (by default the ones from annotations.jar will be used)

Luckily everithing works, but is there an improvement to this code I can made?

3
javaandroid-studionullpointerexceptioninspection
You want to write code that can't ever possibly through an NPE? – takendarkk
Are you using a ViewHolder pattern? – SKT
@takendarkk no, but I want to understand why ide tells me that it could happen – Phate01
Because what happens if you give the method an id which doesn't exist? It returns null. There is nothing wrong at all. – takendarkk
I get that, but is there an improvement to this code I can made? – Phate01

3 Answers

5
votes

This is a known issue in android.support.v7.app.AppCompatActivity and it has been fixed in v24.

https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=203345

You won't have any issues with android.support.v4.app.FragmentActivity or android.app.Activity

2
votes

You should ignore the problem;

As @DanDar3 wrote -> getView() can return null and AndroidStudio highlights that.

But if you really want to make AndroidStudio happy - sure you can...:
Just assert view is not null:

View view = getView();
assert view != null;
(ListView) view.findViewById(R.id.main_list_view);
(TextView) view.findViewById(R.id.items_no);
1
votes

That is cause getView() may return null and is annotated as @Nullable, check out the sources and its JavaDoc - CTRL+Click on getView() call in your code.

/**
 * Get the root view for the fragment's layout (the one returned by {@link #onCreateView}),
 * if provided.
 * 
 * @return The fragment's root view, or null if it has no layout.
 */
@Nullable
public View getView() {
    return mView;
}

You can wrap your code yourself and check for null to have the warning go away, or otherwise place the cursor anywhere inside findViewById() call, wait couple of seconds for the lightbulb to show up (or press Alt+Enter) and then choose one of the suggested solutions.