I managed to solve my problem when I call the setResult and finish methods I did not realize the flow of the program is returned to my onCreate method which meant the rest of my method calls in onCreate was still being called and they require the templatePaths array.
So basically I thought finish would stop the processing and move back to the calling class(using startActivityForResult). Instead I now call finish from my onCreate and use a boolean to determine if I could successfully access the directory.
@Override
protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState)
{
super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
//setContentView(R.layout.dialog_load_template);
boolean fileLoadStatus = getTemplates();
if(fileLoadStatus)
{
populateTemplateList(templatePaths);
}
else
{
setResult(RESULT_CANCELED);
finish();
}
}
private boolean getTemplates()
{
boolean fileLoadStatus = false;
//Gets file directory for saved templates
File finalMarkTemplateDir = new File(Environment.getExternalStorageDirectory().getAbsolutePath() + "/Final Mark Templates");
//Checks if path exists in other word if any templates have been saved before
if(finalMarkTemplateDir.isDirectory())
{
templatePaths = finalMarkTemplateDir.listFiles();
fileLoadStatus = true;
}
else
{
Toast.makeText(this, "No previous templates have been saved.", Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show();
}
return fileLoadStatus;
}