Why is Android's MediaStore.Audio.Album.ALBUM_ID causing an IllegalStateException error?

Question

I'm trying to grab album information from MediaStore . I can get the name and artist very easily but for some reason the ALBUM_ID column is giving me an error when I try to access it.

Caused by: java.lang.IllegalStateException: Couldn't read row 0, col -1 from CursorWindow.  Make sure the Cursor is initialized correctly before accessing data from it.
at android.database.CursorWindow.nativeGetString(Native Method)
at android.database.CursorWindow.getString(CursorWindow.java:450)
at android.database.AbstractWindowedCursor.getString(AbstractWindowedCursor.java:51    )
at android.database.CursorWrapper.getString(CursorWrapper.java:114)
at sage.musicplayer.MainActivity.getAlbumList(MainActivity.java:1540)
at sage.musicplayer.MainActivity.onCreate(MainActivity.java:238)

I can't seem to find a solution. Any help is appreciated! Below is the method I have to grab the album information and add them to an ArrayList .

public ArrayList<Album> getAlbumList() {
    ArrayList<Album> temp = new ArrayList<>();

    /*String[] proj = {MediaStore.Audio.Albums.ALBUM_ID,
                    MediaStore.Audio.Albums.ARTIST,
                    MediaStore.Audio.Albums.ALBUM,
                    MediaStore.Audio.Albums.NUMBER_OF_SONGS
    };*/

    Cursor albumCursor = getContentResolver().query(MediaStore.Audio.Albums.EXTERNAL_CONTENT_URI, null, null, null, null);

    if(albumCursor != null && albumCursor.moveToFirst()) {
        int albumName = albumCursor.getColumnIndex(MediaStore.Audio.Albums.ALBUM);
        int albumArtist = albumCursor.getColumnIndex(MediaStore.Audio.Albums.ARTIST);
        int albumID = albumCursor.getColumnIndex(MediaStore.Audio.Albums.ALBUM_ID);

         do {
            String thisAlbumName = albumCursor.getString(albumName);
            String thisAlbumArtist = albumCursor.getString(albumArtist);
            String thisAlbumID = albumCursor.getString(albumID);//this line is giving me an error

            temp.add(new Album(thisAlbumName, thisAlbumArtist, thisAlbumID));
        }while(albumCursor.moveToNext());
    }
    return temp;
}

Answer 1

I too faced this issue. You can easily solve this issue by changing

int albumID = albumCursor.getColumnIndex(MediaStore.Audio.Albums.ALBUM_ID);

TO

int albumID = albumCursor.getColumnIndex(MediaStore.Audio.Albums._ID);

That is you need to use _ID whenever you want AlbumID of the Album. I have no idea why MediaStore developers used _ID instead of ALBUM_ID , etc stuff.