Crash when trying to present UIActivityViewController - objective-c

I see a crash in Crashlytics than happens to my users sometimes. The crash happens when presenting UIActivityViewController in the last line of the following code:
NSData* snapShot = ... ;
UIActivityViewController *activityViewController = [[UIActivityViewController alloc] initWithActivityItems:[NSArray arrayWithObjects:activityTextsProvider, snapShot ,nil] applicationActivities:[NSArray arrayWithObjects:customActivityA, customActivityB, customActivityC, nullptr]];
activityViewController.excludedActivityTypes = [NSArray arrayWithObjects:UIActivityTypePrint, UIActivityTypeAssignToContact, UIActivityTypeMail, UIActivityTypeCopyToPasteboard, nil];
activityViewController.popoverPresentationController.sourceView = self.myButton;
activityViewController.popoverPresentationController.sourceRect = self.myButton.bounds;
activityViewController.completionWithItemsHandler = ^(NSString *activityType, BOOL completed, NSArray *returnedItems, NSError *activityError)
{
...
};
[self presentViewController:activityViewController animated:YES completion:nil];
I perform this in the main thread and unable to reproduce this crash locally. What could be the reason of this crash?
Edit: I changed nullptr to nil and the issue still happened. I managed to reproduce the issue: the crash happens only if before opening the activity controller i showed a UIMenuController. When creating UIActivityViewController it is not nil, but when presenting the controller i see the crash in the presentViewController line and the activity controller there is shown as nil

József addressed the use of nullptr in comments, and Fogh is spot-on that the actual crash log is important (please edit your question and post the full crash log), but I'd like to point out something else.
You're assuming your call to initialize activityViewController is succeeding. You should code defensively (by assuming everything that can fail probably will fail and testing for this at runtime). Wrap the rest of the configuration and presentation inside an if (activityViewController != nil) {} condition (you should probably have an else with proper error handling/reporting too) so you're properly detecting an all-out initialization failure for multiple reasons (like a misplaced nib, missing resource, etc.).
In your case, I think it's likely the initialization is failing because your class is doing something with a faulty array, as József's nullptr catch suggests. Perhaps you're using one or more pre-C++11 c libraries / compiling with a non-C11/gnu11 "C Language Dialect" build setting and nullptr is not equivalent to nil, leading to strange results in a supposed-to-be-nil-terminated array?
Note: If that turns out to be the case, I'll happily take an upvote but would rather József post his comment as an answer so you can give him proper credit. (Feel free to edit this request out of my answer if/when that happens.)

Related

UIImageWriteToSavedPhotosAlbum and ALAssetsLibrary not saving an image, no error either

I am trying to save an image to the camera roll. This actually used to work wonderfully, but I had to work on other stuff and now I'm returning to the project to update it for iOS 6 and poof this feature no longer works at all on iOS6.
I have tried two approaches, both are failing silently without NSError objects. First, UIImageWriteToSavedPhotosAlbum:
UIImageWriteToSavedPhotosAlbum(img, self, #selector(image:didFinishSavingWithError:contextInfo:), nil);
// Callback
-(void)image:(UIImage *)image didFinishSavingWithError:(NSError *)error contextInfo:(void *)contextInfo
{
// error == nil
}
... and the ALAssetsLibrary approach:
ALAssetsLibrary *library = [[ALAssetsLibrary alloc] init];
[library writeImageToSavedPhotosAlbum:[img CGImage]
orientation:(ALAssetOrientation)[img imageOrientation]
completionBlock:^(NSURL *assetURL, NSError *error)
{
// assetURL == nil
// error == nil
}
Also, [ALAssetsLibrary authorizationStatus] == ALAuthorizationStatusAuthorized evaluates to true
On the Simulator, the app never shows up in the Settings > Privacy > Photos section, however on an actual iPad they do show that the app has permission to access photos. (Also, just to add: The first approach above was what I previously used - it worked on real devices & simulators alike, no problem).
I have also tried running this on the main thread to see if that changed anything - no difference. I was running it on the background previously and it used to work fine (on both simulator and device).
Can anyone shed some light?
Figured it out... I was doing something stupid. UIImage cannot take raw pixel data, you have to first massage it into a form it can accept, with the proper metadata.
Part of the problem was that I was using Cocos2D to get a UIImage from a CCRenderTexture (getUIImageFromBuffer()) and when I switched to Cocos2D-x that function was no longer available, and I simply was ignorant to the fact that UIImage objects cannot be constructed with raw pixel data, I figured it handled header information & formatting automatically.
This answer helped: iPhone - UIImage imageWithData returning nil
And this example was also helpful:
http://www.wmdeveloper.com/2010/09/create-bitmap-graphics-context-on.html?m=1

Cocoa app behaves diffirently with breakpoint on & off

Important update: I found out that most part of my question was based on a false premise (see my answer below). Notifications actually got to the receiver, they just got there too fast. (Although, it still doesn't explain why the behavior with breakpoint and without it was different.)
I'm developing the app that calculates the hashes of files given to it. The calculation takes place in SHHashComputer. It's an abstract class (well, intended to be abstract, as there are no abstract classes in Objective C) that takes the file path and creates an NSInvocationOperation. It, in turn, calls the method (void)computeAndSendHash, which uses the file path saved in the object to compute hash and sends it as notification. The actual computing takes place in (NSString*)computeHash method that child classes need to override.
Here's SHHashComputer.m:
- (NSString*)computeHash {
return [NSString stringWithFormat:#"unimplemented hash for file %#", self.path];
}
- (void)computeAndSendHash {
NSString *result = [self computeHash];
NSString *notificationName = [NSString stringWithFormat:#"%#%#",
gotResultNotification,
self.hashType];
[[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] postNotificationName:notificationName
object:result];
self.operation = nil;
}
And here's SHMD5Computer.m (the child class of SHHashComputer):
- (NSString*)computeHash {
return #"MD5 test"; // it actually doesn't matter what it returns
}
I won't bother you with the receivers of notification. Let's just say that as long as I comment out the computeHash method in SHMD5Computer.m everything works just fine: the notification with text "unimplemented ..." is received & displayed in GUI. But if I don't — then it gets really interesting.
If I don't set up any breakpoints, the notification just never comes. However, if I set up a breakpoint at the declaration of computeHash in SHMD5Computer.h and then step over until the line 'self.operation = nil', and continue execution at that point, the notification gets to destination. If I don't stop there, the debugger suddenly switches to the state as if it isn't debugging anything, and the app freezes.
I don't think that 'WTF' is a good form for a question here, so let me put it this way: am I missing something? Are there errors in my code? What can cause this type of behavior in xcode? How can I fix this?
(If you'll want to get all my code to reproduce it, I'll gladly give it to you.)
More experiments:
If I continute execution exactly after stopping at breakpoint, the application encounters EXC_BAD_ACCESS error in the code that receives the notification, at the last line:
id newResult = [newResultNotification object];
if (newResult == nil)
[NSException raise:#"No object"
format:#"Expected object with notification!"];
else if (![newResult isKindOfClass:[NSString class]])
[NSException raise:#"Not NSString"
format:#"Expected NSString object!"];
else
self.result = (NSString*) newResult;
[self.textField setStringValue:self.result];
When I tried to reproduce the previous experiment, something even stranger happenned. In my debug setup, I have two hash computer objects: one SHMD5HashComputer (which we're talking about), and one SHHashComputer (which, of course, produces the "unimpemented" hash). In all previous experiments, as long as app didn't crash, the notification form SHHashComputer always successfully arrived. But in this case, both notifications didn't arrive, and the app didn't crash. (All the steps are exactly the same as in previous one).
As Josh Caswell pointer out in the comments, I wasn't using the notifications correctly. I should've sent the object itself as notification object, as described in documentation. I fixed that, and I'm getting exactly the same results. (Which means that I fixed it correctly, because sometimes the notifications work correctly, and also that it wasn't the problem).
More updates:
The notification that I'm sending should arrive at SHHashResultViewController. That's how I create it and register for notification:
- (id)initWithHashType:(NSString *)hashType {
self = [self initWithNibName:#"SHHashResultView" bundle:[NSBundle mainBundle]];
if (self) {
[self setHashType:hashType];
}
return self;
}
- (void)setHashType:(NSString *)hashType {
[self.label setStringValue:[NSString stringWithFormat:#"%#:", hashType]];
_hashType = hashType;
NSString *notificationName = [NSString stringWithFormat:#"%#%#",
gotResultNotification,
_hashType];
[[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] addObserver:self
selector:#selector(gotResult:)
name:notificationName
object:nil];
}
Actually, the question was based on a false premise. I thought that notification never came through because I never saw the information displayed in the GUI; however, my error was in the code of controllers (not published there) which made possible the situation in which the GUI first got results of hash calculation and only after that got information about a new input — which resulted in deleting all the text and activating progress animation.

NSFetchedResultsController not displaying changes from background thread

My app is using an NSFetchedResultsController tied to a Core Data store and it has worked well so far, but I am now trying to make the update code asynchronous and I am having issues. I have created an NSOperation sub-class to do my updates in and am successfully adding this new object to an NSOperationQueue. The updates code is executing as I expect it to and I have verified this through debug logs and by examining the SQLite store after it runs.
The problem is that after my background operation completes, the new (or updated) items do not appear in my UITableView. Based on my limited understanding, I believe that I need to notify the main managedObjectContext that changes have occurred so that they may be merged in. My notification is firing, nut no new items appear in the tableview. If I stop the app and restart it, the objects appear in the tableview, leading me to believe that they are being inserted to the core data store successfully but are not being merged into the managedObjectContext being used on the main thread.
I have included a sample of my operation's init, main and notification methods. Am I missing something important or maybe going about this in the wrong way? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
- (id)initWithDelegate:(AppDelegate *)theDelegate
{
if (!(self = [super init])) return nil;
delegate = theDelegate;
return self;
}
- (void)main
{
[self setUpdateContext:[self managedObjectContext]];
NSManagedObjectContext *mainMOC = [self newContextToMainStore];
NSNotificationCenter *center = [NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter];
[center addObserver:self
selector:#selector(contextDidSave:)
name:NSManagedObjectContextDidSaveNotification
object:updateContext];
[self setMainContext:mainMOC];
// Create/update objects with mainContext.
NSError *error = nil;
if (![[self mainContext] save:&error]) {
DLog(#"Error saving event to CoreData store");
}
DLog(#"Core Data context saved");
}
- (void)contextDidSave:(NSNotification*)notification
{
DLog(#"Notification fired.");
SEL selector = #selector(mergeChangesFromContextDidSaveNotification:);
[[delegate managedObjectContext] performSelectorOnMainThread:selector
withObject:notification
waitUntilDone:YES];
}
While debugging, I examined the notification object that is being sent in contextDidSave: and it seems to contain all of the items that were added (excerpt below). This continues to make me think that the inserts/updates are happening correctly but somehow the merge is not being fired.
NSConcreteNotification 0x6b7b0b0 {name = NSManagingContextDidSaveChangesNotification; object = <NSManagedObjectContext: 0x5e8ab30>; userInfo = {
inserted = "{(\n <GCTeam: 0x6b77290> (entity: GCTeam; id: 0xdc5ea10 <x-coredata://F4091BAE-4B47-4F3A-A008-B6A35D7AB196/GCTeam/p1> ; data: {\n changed =
The method that receives your notification must indeed notify your context, you can try something like this, which is what I am doing in my application:
- (void)updateTable:(NSNotification *)saveNotification
{
if (fetchedResultsController == nil)
{
NSError *error;
if (![[self fetchedResultsController] performFetch:&error]) {
//Update to handle the error appropriately.
NSLog(#"Unresolved error %#, %#", error, [error userInfo]);
exit(-1); // Fail
}
}
else
{
NSManagedObjectContext *context = [fetchedResultsController managedObjectContext];
// Merging changes causes the fetched results controller to update its results
[context mergeChangesFromContextDidSaveNotification:saveNotification];
// Reload your table view data
[self.tableView reloadData];
}
}
Hope that helps.
Depending on the specifics of what you are doing, you may be going about this the wrong way.
For most cases, you can simply assign a delegate using NSFetchedResultsControllerDelegate. You provide an implementation for one of the methods specified in "respondingToChanges" depending on your needs, and then send the tableView a reloadData message.
The answer turned out to be unrelated to the posted code which ended up working as I expected. For reasons that I am still not entirely sure of, it had something to do with the first launch of the app. When I attempted to run my update operation on launches after the Core Data store was created, it worked as expected. I solved the problem by pre-loading a version of the sqlite database in the app so that it did not need to create an empty store on first launch. I wish I understood why this solved the problem, but I was planning on doing this either way. I am leaving this here in the hope that someone else may find it useful and not lose as much time as I did on this.
I've been running into a similar problem in the simulator. I was kicking off an update process when transitioning from the root table to the selected folder. The update process would update CoreData from a web server, save, then merge, but the data didn't show up. If I browsed back and forth a couple times it would show up eventually, and once it worked like clockwork (but I was never able to get that perfect run repeated). This gave me the idea that maybe it's a thread/event timing issue in the simulator, where the table is refreshing too fast or notifications just aren't being queued right or something along those lines. I decided to try running in Instruments to see if I could pinpoint the problem (all CoreData, CPU Monitor, Leaks, Allocations, Thread States, Dispatch, and a couple others). Every time I've done a "first run" with a blank slate since then it has worked perfectly. Maybe Instruments is slowing it down just enough?
Ultimately I need to test on the device to get an accurate test, and if the problem persists I will try your solution in the accepted answer (to create a base sql-lite db to load from).

Objc memory crash with autorelase

I have been hunting all over my code and can't find the source of this crash:
I am trying to decode an object with an NSKeyedUnarchiver and it crashes on it every time and says:
*** __NSAutoreleaseFreedObject(): release of previously deallocated object (0x1008ad200) ignored
*** __NSAutoreleaseFreedObject(): release of previously deallocated object (0x1008ab200) ignored
*** __NSAutoreleaseFreedObject(): release of previously deallocated object (0x1008a8c00) ignored
Ha my bad the reason why initWithCoder was not getting called was it was having issues with the [super initWithCoder:]; This is still driving me crazy. I looked and the pointers and the NSData objects are what are going wrong:
vertices = malloc(size_point3D * vertexCount);
textureCoords = malloc(size_point2D * textureCount);
normals = malloc(size_point3D * normalCount);
faces = malloc(sizeof(GLuint) * faceCount);
NSData *vertexData = [[NSData alloc] initWithData:[coder decodeObjectForKey:#"vertices"]];
NSData *textureData = [[NSData alloc] initWithData:[coder decodeObjectForKey:#"textureCoords"]];
NSData *normalData = [[NSData alloc] initWithData:[coder decodeObjectForKey:#"normals"]];
NSData *faceData = [[NSData alloc] initWithData:[coder decodeObjectForKey:#"faces"]];
memcpy(vertices, [vertexData bytes], sizeof(point3D) * vertexCount);
memcpy(textureCoords, [textureData bytes], sizeof(point2D) * textureCount);
memcpy(normals, [normalData bytes], sizeof(point3D) * normalCount);
memcpy(faces, [faceData bytes], sizeof(GLuint) * faceCount);
[vertexData release];
[textureData release];
[normalData release];
[faceData release];
I have tried retaining everything in this part (even the string) but it does not help.
This was a hard one to solve partly because debugging memory behaves inconsistently.
I have 2 classes JGStaticModel and JGModel. For some reason, the unarchiver would pick one of those at random so sometimes initWithCoder was sent to JGModel and not JGStaticModel. This led me to think it was not being called. Also since their structure is slightly different it had issues and crashed. The reason why I got the autorelease problem was I patched some memory problems in JGStaticModel but not JGModel so it would crash on the memory because I had not fixed it there.
Thanks for all the help!
Try turning on NSZombieEnabled, this should help you track down the problem.
If neither tools (Run -> Run with Performance tools) and NSZombiesEnabled helps, you can override - (id)retain and - (void)release methods of the class that caused the exception. Call super implementation and log retain/release. You can break in this methods to see the call stack. This way isn't beautiful, however, it helped me few time to figure out where was an extra release/autorelease call
This problem is very easy to solve with the solution given here.
The relevant part is:
If an environment variable named "NSAutoreleaseHaltOnFreedObject" is set with string value "YES", the function will automatically break in the debugger

Object changes from NSMutableArray to NSData to NSString

I have a program which works normally. Then I downloaded some code from http://github.com/matej/MBProgressHUD to show a progress meter when doing something.
This is the code that makes the progress meter pop up.
[HUD showWhileExecuting:#selector(myTask) onTarget:self withObject:nil animated:YES];
This will show a progress meter while the method myTask is running.
This is the code for the showWhileExecuting method.
- (void)showWhileExecuting:(SEL)method onTarget:(id)target withObject:(id)object animated:(BOOL)animated {
methodForExecution = method;
targetForExecution = [target retain];
objectForExecution = [object retain];
// Launch execution in new thread
taskInProgress = YES;
[NSThread detachNewThreadSelector:#selector(launchExecution) toTarget:self withObject:nil];
// Show HUD view
[self show:animated];
}
If I use this to call the function myTask then one of my class properties will change from an NSMutableString to an NSData object somewhere, and then later on it will change to an NSString. I don't see anywhere in the code that causes this to change, so it's probably some kind of bug. Is memory getting corrupted? What's causing this to happen?
Most likely it's a memory (retain/release issue). If you don't properly retain an object, it may get released out from under you. At that point, the memory will be reclaimed by the OS, which may decide to store something else there. Try turning on NSZombies, and double checking your retain/release/autoreleases.