Text to Speech producing error

Question

So I am attempting to implement text to speech into my app for the first time ever. I continue to get an error thought when the speech is called. Here is the log that I am getting:

01-23 18:52:29.825: E/AndroidRuntime(24380): FATAL EXCEPTION: main
01-23 18:52:29.825: E/AndroidRuntime(24380): Process: com.rcd.league, PID: 24380
01-23 18:52:29.825: E/AndroidRuntime(24380): java.lang.NullPointerException
01-23 18:52:29.825: E/AndroidRuntime(24380):    at com.rcd.league.speakActivity.speakOut(speakActivity.java:60)
01-23 18:52:29.825: E/AndroidRuntime(24380):    at com.rcd.league.spawnTimers$15.onClick(Timers.java:350)
01-23 18:52:29.825: E/AndroidRuntime(24380):    at android.view.View.performClick(View.java:4442)
01-23 18:52:29.825: E/AndroidRuntime(24380):    at android.view.View$PerformClick.run(View.java:18423)
01-23 18:52:29.825: E/AndroidRuntime(24380):    at android.os.Handler.handleCallback(Handler.java:733)
01-23 18:52:29.825: E/AndroidRuntime(24380):    at android.os.Handler.dispatchMessage(Handler.java:95)
01-23 18:52:29.825: E/AndroidRuntime(24380):    at android.os.Looper.loop(Looper.java:137)
01-23 18:52:29.825: E/AndroidRuntime(24380):    at android.app.ActivityThread.main(ActivityThread.java:5083)
01-23 18:52:29.825: E/AndroidRuntime(24380):    at java.lang.reflect.Method.invokeNative(Native Method)
01-23 18:52:29.825: E/AndroidRuntime(24380):    at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:515)
01-23 18:52:29.825: E/AndroidRuntime(24380):    at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit$MethodAndArgsCaller.run(ZygoteInit.java:777)
01-23 18:52:29.825: E/AndroidRuntime(24380):    at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit.main(ZygoteInit.java:593)
01-23 18:52:29.825: E/AndroidRuntime(24380):    at dalvik.system.NativeStart.main(Native Method)

Here is my code:

package com.rcd.league;

import java.util.Locale;

import android.app.Activity;
import android.content.Intent;
import android.os.Bundle;
import android.speech.tts.TextToSpeech;
import android.util.Log;

public class speakActivity extends Activity  implements TextToSpeech.OnInitListener {

    private int MY_DATA_CHECK_CODE = 0;
    private TextToSpeech tts;


    @Override
    protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        Intent checkTTSIntent = new Intent();
        checkTTSIntent.setAction(TextToSpeech.Engine.ACTION_CHECK_TTS_DATA);
        startActivityForResult(checkTTSIntent, MY_DATA_CHECK_CODE);
        tts = new TextToSpeech(this, this);
    }

    @Override
    public void onDestroy() {
        // Don't forget to shutdown tts!
        if (tts != null) {
            tts.stop();
            tts.shutdown();
        }
        super.onDestroy();
    }

    @Override
    public void onInit(int status) {

        if (status == TextToSpeech.SUCCESS) {

            int result = tts.setLanguage(Locale.US);

            if (result == TextToSpeech.LANG_MISSING_DATA
                    || result == TextToSpeech.LANG_NOT_SUPPORTED) {
                Log.e("TTS", "This Language is not supported");
            } else {
                speakOut();
            }

        } else {
            Log.e("TTS", "Initilization Failed!");
        }

    }

    public void speakOut() {

        String text = "test";

        tts.speak(text, TextToSpeech.QUEUE_FLUSH, null);
    }



}

I am calling speakOut(); from another activity. Here is the clip of that code:

speakActivity speak = new speakActivity();

...

    bt.setOnClickListener(new OnClickListener() {

                    @Override
                    public void onClick(View v) {
                    if (btTimer.getText().toString().contains(":50")){
                        cd[0].start();
                        speak.speakOut();

                    } else {
                        cd[0].cancel();
                        cd[0].onFinish();
                    }

                }
            });

Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

EDIT: I have also tried QUEUE_ADD instead of QUEUE_FLUSH and that didnt work either :/

Answer 1

You created the speakActivity Activity, but in the code you have posted you never started the Activity. Because the activity was never started, onCreate() was never called and therefore tts is not initialized. That is why you get a NullPointerException when you call

tts.speak(text, TextToSpeech.QUEUE_FLUSH, null);

in speakOut().

See this stackoverflow question for more information about when onCreate() is called: Is onCreate called when an Activity object is created?