Is parsing a string in the onTick method crashing my app?

Question

I have a short CountDownTimer (3 seconds long at minimum, 10 at max) that I'm using to control when a new math problem is displayed on the screen. Every 1 second, the CountDownTimer should check if the user has entered the correct answer in an EditText. Here is the code I have for it:

private void startQuestionTimer()
    {
        long startTime = DataHolder.getQuestionTime()*1000;
        questionTimer = new CountDownTimer(startTime, 1000) {

            @Override
            public void onTick(long millisUntilFinished) {
                //continually check user's input into the EditText
                //if input is ever equal to actualIntAnswer, reset the timer and EditText
                //then display another math problem
                int givenAnswer = Integer.parseInt(userAnswer.getText().toString());
                if (givenAnswer == actualIntAnswer)
                {
                    questionTimer.cancel();
                    userAnswer.getText().clear();
                    displayNewMathProblem();
                    questionTimer.start();
                }
            }

            @Override
            public void onFinish() {
                displayNewMathProblem();
                if (!testTimeExpired)
                {
                    questionTimer.start();
                }
                else
                {
                    questionTimer.cancel();
                }
            }
        }.start();
    }

The problem I'm having is that the app crashes as soon as this CountDownTimer is created. For some reason, int givenAnswer = Integer.parseInt(userAnswer.getText().toString()); seems to crash the app, and I think it's because the CountDownTimer cannot do all that in just 1 second. I tried splitting it into 2 methods like so:

private int givenAnswer;
private String givenAnswerToString()
    {
        return userAnswer.getText().toString();
    }

    private void givenAnswerToInt()
    {
        givenAnswer = Integer.parseInt(givenAnswerToString());
    }

And then calling to givenAnswerToInt() in onTick() like so:

@Override
            public void onTick(long millisUntilFinished) {
                givenAnswerToInt();
                if (givenAnswer == actualIntAnswer)
                {
                    questionTimer.cancel();
                    userAnswer.getText().clear();
                    displayNewMathProblem();
                    questionTimer.start();
                }

            }

Here is the error message I get when the CountDownTimer is created:

What's going on here? Is it an issue of trying to do too many things in a short amount of time like I think it is, or is it something else entirely? What can I do to fix this?

Answer 1

Integer.parseInt can throw a NumberFormatException which would cause the application to stop abruptly if not caught.
This happens when the String that you're passing as parameter of parseInt isn't recognized as a decimal number.
The fact that this happens almost instantaneously in your code is due to the fact that the EditText.getText().toString() is just returning "" , since the user has not typed any number in the widget.
What you can do is simply manage the exception with a try-catch statement:

int givenAnswer = 0; // initialize accordingly with your needs
try {
    givenAnswer = Integer.parseInt(userAnswer.getText().toString());
} catch (NumberFormatException e) {
    // return or do something else to deal with the problem
}

if(givenAnswer == actualIntAnswer){
    ...
}
...