[FIXED] Preventing/catching "IllegalArgumentException: parameter must be a descendant of this view" error

Issue

I have a ListView with some focusable components inside (mostly EditTexts). Yeah, I know this isn't exactly recommended, but in general, almost everything is working fine and the focus goes where it has to go (with a few tweaks I had to code). Anyway, my problem is that there's a weird race condition when scrolling the list with your finger and then suddenly using the trackball when the IME keyboard is being displayed. Something must go out of bounds and get recycled at which point the offsetRectBetweenParentAndChild() method must kick in and throw the IllegalArgumentException.

The problem is that this exception is thrown outside of any block in which I can insert a try/catch (as far as I know). So there are two valid solutions to this question, either:

1. Someone knows why this exception being thrown and how to stop it from happening
2. Someone knows how to put a try/catch block somewhere that will at least let my application survive. As far as I know the problem is that of focus, so it definitely shouldn't kill my application (which is what it's doing). I tried overriding the ViewGroup's methods but those two offset* methods are marked as final.

Stack trace:

08-17 18:23:09.825: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(1608): FATAL EXCEPTION: main
08-17 18:23:09.825: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(1608): java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: parameter must be a descendant of this view
08-17 18:23:09.825: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(1608):     at android.view.ViewGroup.offsetRectBetweenParentAndChild(ViewGroup.java:2633)
08-17 18:23:09.825: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(1608):     at android.view.ViewGroup.offsetDescendantRectToMyCoords(ViewGroup.java:2570)
08-17 18:23:09.825: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(1608):     at android.view.ViewRoot.scrollToRectOrFocus(ViewRoot.java:1624)
08-17 18:23:09.825: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(1608):     at android.view.ViewRoot.draw(ViewRoot.java:1357)
08-17 18:23:09.825: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(1608):     at android.view.ViewRoot.performTraversals(ViewRoot.java:1258)
08-17 18:23:09.825: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(1608):     at android.view.ViewRoot.handleMessage(ViewRoot.java:1859)
08-17 18:23:09.825: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(1608):     at android.os.Handler.dispatchMessage(Handler.java:99)
08-17 18:23:09.825: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(1608):     at android.os.Looper.loop(Looper.java:130)
08-17 18:23:09.825: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(1608):     at android.app.ActivityThread.main(ActivityThread.java:3683)
08-17 18:23:09.825: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(1608):     at java.lang.reflect.Method.invokeNative(Native Method)
08-17 18:23:09.825: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(1608):     at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:507)
08-17 18:23:09.825: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(1608):     at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit$MethodAndArgsCaller.run(ZygoteInit.java:839)
08-17 18:23:09.825: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(1608):     at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit.main(ZygoteInit.java:597)
08-17 18:23:09.825: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(1608):     at dalvik.system.NativeStart.main(Native Method)

Solution

For what it's worth (or whoever stumbles on this), I've abandoned the ListView approach for this Activity. Aside from the random crashes, it's almost impossible to get the focus behavior correctly without setting the windowSoftInputMode="adjustPan" which opens a bunch of other cans of worms. Instead, I just went for a "simple" ScrollView and that has been working great.

Answered By - dmon
Answer Checked By - Clifford M. (JavaFixing Volunteer)