android.widget.Editor: NullPointerException in SpannableStringInternal

Question

I am receiving error reports in Crashlytics for NPEs in SpannableStringInternal but could not reproduce the issue on any phone or determine the source of it. I'm calling for the Internet to help me identify the underlying issue.

Fatal Exception: java.lang.NullPointerException: Attempt to invoke virtual method 'int java.lang.Object.hashCode()' on a null object reference
   at android.text.SpannableStringInternal.hashCode(SpannableStringInternal.java:480)
   at android.text.SpannedString.hashCode(SpannedString.java)
   at java.util.Objects.hashCode(Objects.java:98)
   at android.view.inputmethod.CursorAnchorInfo.<init>(CursorAnchorInfo.java:435)
   at android.view.inputmethod.CursorAnchorInfo.<init>(CursorAnchorInfo.java)
   at android.view.inputmethod.CursorAnchorInfo$Builder.build(CursorAnchorInfo.java:391)
   at android.widget.Editor$CursorAnchorInfoNotifier.updatePosition(Editor.java:4390)
   at android.widget.Editor$PositionListener.onPreDraw(Editor.java:3250)
   at android.view.ViewTreeObserver.dispatchOnPreDraw(ViewTreeObserver.java:1013)
   at android.view.ViewRootImpl.performTraversals(ViewRootImpl.java:2492)
   at android.view.ViewRootImpl.doTraversal(ViewRootImpl.java:1509)
   at android.view.ViewRootImpl$TraversalRunnable.run(ViewRootImpl.java:7051)
   at android.view.Choreographer$CallbackRecord.run(Choreographer.java:927)
   at android.view.Choreographer.doCallbacks(Choreographer.java:702)
   at android.view.Choreographer.doFrame(Choreographer.java:638)
   at android.view.Choreographer$FrameDisplayEventReceiver.run(Choreographer.java:913)
   at android.os.Handler.handleCallback(Handler.java:751)
   at android.os.Handler.dispatchMessage(Handler.java:95)
   at android.os.Looper.loop(Looper.java:154)
   at android.app.ActivityThread.main(ActivityThread.java:6692)
   at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java)
   at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit$MethodAndArgsCaller.run(ZygoteInit.java:1468)
   at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit.main(ZygoteInit.java:1358)

From the source it looks like that somehow the cursor/selection is causing null Spans to be set.

The error only occurs on Android 7:

Answer 1

Faced same issue. In my case it was caused by rich text parser lib cwac-richedit witch was setting null spans while parsing html to spannable. Here is fix for it.

Check where do you get CharSequence which is set to EditText, it is very likely that null span is set somewhere there. In my case it wasn't cursor or selection who set those spans.