Android Play Store Crashes During BillingClient.launchBillingFlow

Question

When attempting to launch billing for an in-app item, I am getting the following error.

java.lang.NullPointerException: Attempt to invoke virtual method 'java.lang.String android.content.Intent.getStringExtra(java.lang.String)' on a null object reference

The code is simple. The user selects an item. I then pass that item into querySkuDetailsAsync. I get and see the result. For API reasons, I then call...

SkuDetails skuDetails = new SkuDetails(skuDetails.getOriginalJSON());
BillingFlowParams flowParams = BillingFlowParams.newBuilder().setSkuDetails(skuDetails).build();
BillingResult billingResult = client.launchBillingFlow(activity, flowParams);

And then, most of the time, I get the NPE. Things were working fine. I don't know what change caused this issue.

Note that I did try passing the skuDetails directly, in case JSON was the issue. It didn't work.

The billing library isn't open source, so I am at a loss as to how to solve this issue.

Palacios

I've never had an issue with this, but I only ever pass SkuDetails instances directly that I got from querySkuDetails. Can you post the complete stack trace? – Wellspring

Answer 1

I found a solution. If I call activity.setIntent(new Intent()) before calling "launchBillingFlow", the error goes away. Seems like a bug in the now closed sourced billing library.

Palacios

Thanks! I am having the same issue and will try this with the next app update (adding a null-check on activity.intent though). It looks very plausible, as the launchBillingFlow (you can easily decompile in Android Studio) looks for the intent extra "PROXY_PACKAGE" without null-checking the intent first. Did you report this to Google yet? – Phenology

I haven't reported it yet. I've had terrible luck with Google and bug reports. They probably will refuse to acknowledge the issue unless I generate a full bug report, build them a sample app, and fly out to SF to show them how to reproduce it in person. – Palacios

I understand! The crash is gone now for my app with your the fix applied. Thanks again! – Phenology

It seems that this is still an issue. Your fix helped me thanks! In Kotlin do activity.intent = Intent() before calling launchBillingFlow. – Urrutia