I have an Observable and an Observer. The observable does download some stuff in a background thread and calls notifyObservers to let the observers read the status.
At some point in public void update the observer tries to updates the GUI
((TextView)findViewById('R.id.foo')).setText("bar");
but it seems like the observable thread calls this method, because the Observable (!!!) throws this:
android.view.ViewRoot$CalledFromWrongThreadException: Only the original thread that created a view hierarchy can touch its views.
at android.view.ViewRoot.checkThread(ViewRoot.java:2462)
at android.view.ViewRoot.requestLayout(ViewRoot.java:512)
...
at com.mynamespace.acitivty.TrackActivity.startPlay(TrackActivity.java:72)
at com.mynamespace.acitivty.TrackActivity.update(TrackActivity.java:107)
at java.util.Observable.notifyObservers(Observable.java:147)
at java.util.Observable.notifyObservers(Observable.java:128)
at com.mynamespace.module.communication.Download.stateChanged(Download.java:213)
at com.mynamespace.module.communication.Download.run(Download.java:186)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:1058)
Is there some way I can prevent this from happening? I'm sure I'm missing something obvious here.
I think your issue is similar to this one: Android:android.view.ViewRoot$CalledFromWrongThreadException - How to solve the problem?
As bhatt4982 answers there, you can use Handler. From its doc:
"There are two main uses for a Handler: (1) to schedule messages and runnables to be executed as some point in the future; and (2) to enqueue an action to be performed on a different thread than your own.".
The answer from AshtonBRSC is also good, you can enclose your UI update in a Runnable and use the runOnUiThread Activity's method.