Throwing IllegalArgumentException in background thread of ApplicationStarter

[iamcalendar]

We have received an exception as below:

java.lang.IllegalArgumentException:
1. at net.time4j.tz.Timezone.a (Timezone.java:253)
2. at net.time4j.tz.Timezone.a (Timezone.java:15)
3. at net.time4j.tz.Timezone.a (Timezone.java:1)
4. at net.time4j.format.expert.ChronoFormatter.access$1000 (ChronoFormatter.java)
   or                     .access$1100 (ChronoFormatter.java)
   or                     .access$700 (ChronoFormatter.java)
   or                     .addPattern (ChronoFormatter.java)
   or                     .checkConsistency (ChronoFormatter.java)
   or                     .display (ChronoFormatter.java)
   or                     .format (ChronoFormatter.java)
   or                     .format0 (ChronoFormatter.java)
   or                     .formatToBuffer (ChronoFormatter.java)
   or                     .freeze (ChronoFormatter.java)
   or                     .getChronology (ChronoFormatter.java)
   or                     .getReason (ChronoFormatter.java)
   or                     .isEqual (ChronoFormatter.java)
   or                     .ofDatePattern (ChronoFormatter.java)
   or                     .ofMomentStyle (ChronoFormatter.java)
   or                     .ofPattern (ChronoFormatter.java)
   or                     .parse (ChronoFormatter.java)
   or                     .parseElements (ChronoFormatter.java)
   or                     .print (ChronoFormatter.java)
   or                     .rfc1123DateTime (ChronoFormatter.java)
   or                     .setUp (ChronoFormatter.java)
   or                     .sub (ChronoFormatter.java)
   or                     .updateSelf (ChronoFormatter.java)
   or                     .with (ChronoFormatter.java)
   or                     .withTimezone (ChronoFormatter.java)
5. at net.time4j.format.expert.ChronoFormatter.a (ChronoFormatter.java:22)
6. at net.time4j.android.ApplicationStarter$1.run (ApplicationStarter.java:38)
7. at java.lang.Thread.run (Thread.java:784)

It sounds like the exception is thrown in background thread of net.time4j.android.ApplicationStarter class (line 153) when tries to format the current moment:

Log.i(
    TIME4A,
    ChronoFormatter.ofMomentStyle(
        style,
        style,
        sysloc,
        tzid
    ).format(SystemClock.currentMoment())
);

We are wondering if you have any idea why this happens? Please let us know if you require any further information. Thanks again for your kind help!

[MenoData]

Hm, I really miss the message of the exception shown above, and I don't know or remember any place in Time4A-code where an IllegalArgumentException is produced without any detail message (that is only with the stack trace and nothing else). Such an exception is expected if anything is wrong with the time zone and would show (in its detail message) the problem time zone identifier.

Can you please check your exception handling or look for any other Time4A-related logs which might show more details?

[iamcalendar]

Thanks for responding to our question. This is all we got from the play store crash report. We agree with you that the exception message is missing. If we get more info we will let you know. Thanks for your time.

[MenoData]

Maybe this link contains some helpful info how to look for the detail message.

Another link which might be useful, too:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/48692071/google-play-store-crash-reports-incomplete-missing-most-of-the-data

[iamcalendar]

Thanks again for your help. Unfortunately, the Google Play Developer Console does'nt present the detail message. As explained in this link, it is a known issue but not fixed yet. This is another complaint.

[MenoData]

The first link I had given to you states that it might be possible to see the details after having downloaded csv-files as reports from Google. How to download (have not tested it myself though) is explained in the section "Download reports from Google Cloud Storage":

https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/6083203?hl=en

[iamcalendar]

We examined your links but we did not get more information.

The section "Download reports from Google Cloud Storage" has a link to the following page:
https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/6135870

In this page, the section "Crashes & ANRs" states that:

As of May 2018, you can no longer download detailed reports for crashes and ANRs.

[MenoData]

Sorry to hear this. So what can we do now? Without the detail message, there is no chance to fix or to reproduce your issue. I don't understand Google here. About practical consequences in the app:

• Waiting for Googles solution for the serious defect of exception reports
• It is only the prefetch thread which fails so other parts of the app might still work???
• Something with Timezone.ofSystem().getID() might be wrong on special devices (just a feeling now)
• You might try out the alternative Timezone.ofPlatform() using the device data in the app

Okay, I have now implemented/improved the logging, relevant part:

142                         DisplayMode style = DisplayMode.FULL; 
143                         TZID tzid = Timezone.ofSystem().getID(); 
144                         Locale sysloc = Locale.getDefault(); 
145                         Log.i(TIME4A, "System time zone at start: [" + tzid.canonical() + "]"); 
146                         Log.i(TIME4A, "System locale at start: [" + sysloc.toString() + "]"); 
147                         try { 
148                             String currentTime = 
149                                 ChronoFormatter.ofMomentStyle( 
150                                     style, 
151                                     style, 
152                                     sysloc, 
153                                     tzid 
154                                 ).format(SystemClock.currentMoment()); 
155                             Log.i(TIME4A, currentTime); 
156                         } catch (RuntimeException re) { 
157                             Log.e( 
158                                 TIME4A, 
159                                 "Error on prefetch thread with: time zone=" 
160                                     + tzid.canonical() 
161                                     + ", locale=" + sysloc + "!", 
162                                 re); 
163                             throw re; // rethrow for Google Play Store etc. 
164                         } 

Maybe this change gives a chance to a) see the exception in Google Play Store (stacktrace and maybe timestamp of exception) and b) see the log files via downloadable reports (triggered by Log.e(...)). I will soon release a new version of Time4A so you also get the fix for the HirjiAdjustment-problem. What do you think?

[iamcalendar]

At the moment, we don't have a crash/exception tracker system as we don't ask users for Internet permission (in future if we add a feature that requires Internet permission then we will definitely consider adding crash/exception analytics). For now there is nothing much we can do on our side unless wait for Google solution for exception messages. We plan to not let throw an exception for this particular case (hope this helps).

Thanks for releasing new version with HirjiAdjustment-issue fix. As always, we really appreciate your time and consideration.

[MenoData]

I have also committed a small change in both Time4J and Time4A in order to improve the handling of customized zone identifiers. If such a non-standard id is found then the code will first check if it is the id of the current system time zone before throwing an exception. Maybe your issue will completely go away with this change.

[iamcalendar]

Not sure if this helps but we received again the same crash twice. We have got the crash only on Android 8.0 devices. We guess there is a problem with this version of Android.

[MenoData]

Now I have released Time4A-v3.44-2018e which might let your issue go away.

[MenoData]

The referenced issue given by @fnlctrl also indicates that this issue is solved.

[MenoData]

Please use v3.44.1-2018e (or later) with an important fix for a crash in determining the system timezone.

[MenoData]

Sorry, my previous comment is already outdated. Please use the new bugfix release v3.44.2-2018e.