In this document
- Creating a Dialog Fragment
- Building an Alert Dialog
- Passing Events Back to the Dialog's Host
- Showing a Dialog
- Showing a Dialog Fullscreen or as an Embedded Fragment
- Dismissing a Dialog
Key classes
See also
- Dialogs design guide
- Pickers (Date/Time dialogs)
A dialog is a small window that prompts the user to make a decision or enter additional information. A dialog does not fill the screen and is normally used for modal events that require users to take an action before they can proceed.
Dialog Design
For information about how to design your dialogs, including recommendations for language, read the Dialogs design guide.
The Dialog
class is the base class for dialogs, but you
should avoid instantiating Dialog
directly.
Instead, use one of the following subclasses:
AlertDialog
- A dialog that can show a title, up to three buttons, a list of selectable items, or a custom layout.
DatePickerDialog
orTimePickerDialog
- A dialog with a pre-defined UI that allows the user to select a date or time.
Avoid ProgressDialog
Android includes another dialog class called
ProgressDialog
that shows a dialog with a progress bar. However, if you
need to indicate loading or indeterminate progress, you should instead follow the design
guidelines for Progress &
Activity and use a ProgressBar
in your layout.
These classes define the style and structure for your dialog, but you should
use a DialogFragment
as a container for your dialog.
The DialogFragment
class provides all the controls you
need to create your dialog and manage its appearance, instead of calling methods
on the Dialog
object.
Using DialogFragment
to manage the dialog
ensures that it correctly handles lifecycle events
such as when the user presses the Back button or rotates the screen. The DialogFragment
class also allows you to reuse the dialog's UI as an
embeddable component in a larger UI, just like a traditional Fragment
(such as when you want the dialog UI to appear differently
on large and small screens).
The following sections in this guide describe how to use a DialogFragment
in combination with an AlertDialog
object. If you'd like to create a date or time picker, you should instead read the
Pickers guide.
Note:
Because the DialogFragment
class was originally added with
Android 3.0 (API level 11), this document describes how to use the DialogFragment
class that's provided with the Support Library. By adding this library
to your app, you can use DialogFragment
and a variety of other
APIs on devices running Android 1.6 or higher. If the minimum version your app supports
is API level 11 or higher, then you can use the framework version of DialogFragment
, but be aware that the links in this document are for the support
library APIs. When using the support library,
be sure that you import android.support.v4.app.DialogFragment
class and not android.app.DialogFragment
.
Creating a Dialog Fragment
You can accomplish a wide variety of dialog designs—including
custom layouts and those described in the Dialogs
design guide—by extending
DialogFragment
and creating a AlertDialog
in the onCreateDialog()
callback method.
For example, here's a basic AlertDialog
that's managed within
a DialogFragment
:
public class FireMissilesDialogFragment extends DialogFragment { @Override public Dialog onCreateDialog(Bundle savedInstanceState) { // Use the Builder class for convenient dialog construction AlertDialog.Builder builder = new AlertDialog.Builder(getActivity()); builder.setMessage(R.string.dialog_fire_missiles) .setPositiveButton(R.string.fire, new DialogInterface.OnClickListener() { public void onClick(DialogInterface dialog, int id) { // FIRE ZE MISSILES! } }) .setNegativeButton(R.string.cancel, new DialogInterface.OnClickListener() { public void onClick(DialogInterface dialog, int id) { // User cancelled the dialog } }); // Create the AlertDialog object and return it return builder.create(); } }
Now, when you create an instance of this class and call show()
on that object, the dialog appears as
shown in figure 1.
The next section describes more about using the AlertDialog.Builder
APIs to create the dialog.
Depending on how complex your dialog is, you can implement a variety of other callback
methods in the DialogFragment
, including all the basic
fragment lifecycle methods.
Building an Alert Dialog
The AlertDialog
class allows you to build a variety of dialog designs and
is often the only dialog class you'll need.
As shown in figure 2, there are three regions of an alert dialog:
- Title
This is optional and should be used only when the content area is occupied by a detailed message, a list, or custom layout. If you need to state a simple message or question (such as the dialog in figure 1), you don't need a title.
- Content area
This can display a message, a list, or other custom layout.
- Action buttons
There should be no more than three action buttons in a dialog.
The AlertDialog.Builder
class provides APIs that allow you to create an AlertDialog
with these kinds of content, including a custom layout.
To build an AlertDialog
:
// 1. Instantiate anAlertDialog.Builder
with its constructor AlertDialog.Builder builder = new AlertDialog.Builder(getActivity()); // 2. Chain together various setter methods to set the dialog characteristics builder.setMessage(R.string.dialog_message) .setTitle(R.string.dialog_title); // 3. Get theAlertDialog
fromcreate()
AlertDialog dialog = builder.create();
The following topics show how to define various dialog attributes using the
AlertDialog.Builder
class.
Adding buttons
To add action buttons like those in figure 2,
call the setPositiveButton()
and
setNegativeButton()
methods:
AlertDialog.Builder builder = new AlertDialog.Builder(getActivity()); // Add the buttons builder.setPositiveButton(R.string.ok, new DialogInterface.OnClickListener() { public void onClick(DialogInterface dialog, int id) { // User clicked OK button } }); builder.setNegativeButton(R.string.cancel, new DialogInterface.OnClickListener() { public void onClick(DialogInterface dialog, int id) { // User cancelled the dialog } }); // Set other dialog properties ... // Create the AlertDialog AlertDialog dialog = builder.create();
The set...Button()
methods require a title for the button (supplied
by a string resource) and a
DialogInterface.OnClickListener
that defines the action to take
when the user presses the button.
There are three different action buttons you can add:
- Positive
- You should use this to accept and continue with the action (the "OK" action).
- Negative
- You should use this to cancel the action.
- Neutral
- You should use this when the user may not want to proceed with the action, but doesn't necessarily want to cancel. It appears between the positive and negative buttons. For example, the action might be "Remind me later."
You can add only one of each button type to an AlertDialog
. That is, you cannot have more than one "positive" button.
Adding a list
There are three kinds of lists available with the AlertDialog
APIs:
- A traditional single-choice list
- A persistent single-choice list (radio buttons)
- A persistent multiple-choice list (checkboxes)
To create a single-choice list like the one in figure 3,
use the setItems()
method:
@Override public Dialog onCreateDialog(Bundle savedInstanceState) { AlertDialog.Builder builder = new AlertDialog.Builder(getActivity()); builder.setTitle(R.string.pick_color) .setItems(R.array.colors_array, new DialogInterface.OnClickListener() { public void onClick(DialogInterface dialog, int which) { // The 'which' argument contains the index position // of the selected item } }); return builder.create(); }
Because the list appears in the dialog's content area,
the dialog cannot show both a message and a list and you should set a title for the
dialog with setTitle()
.
To specify the items for the list, call setItems()
, passing an array.
Alternatively, you can specify a list using setAdapter()
. This allows you to back the list
with dynamic data (such as from a database) using a ListAdapter
.
If you choose to back your list with a ListAdapter
,
always use a Loader
so that the content loads
asynchronously. This is described further in
Building Layouts
with an Adapter and the Loaders
guide.
Note: By default, touching a list item dismisses the dialog, unless you're using one of the following persistent choice lists.
Adding a persistent multiple-choice or single-choice list
To add a list of multiple-choice items (checkboxes) or
single-choice items (radio buttons), use the
setMultiChoiceItems()
or
setSingleChoiceItems()
methods, respectively.
For example, here's how you can create a multiple-choice list like the
one shown in figure 4 that saves the selected
items in an ArrayList
:
@Override public Dialog onCreateDialog(Bundle savedInstanceState) { mSelectedItems = new ArrayList(); // Where we track the selected items AlertDialog.Builder builder = new AlertDialog.Builder(getActivity()); // Set the dialog title builder.setTitle(R.string.pick_toppings) // Specify the list array, the items to be selected by default (null for none), // and the listener through which to receive callbacks when items are selected .setMultiChoiceItems(R.array.toppings, null, new DialogInterface.OnMultiChoiceClickListener() { @Override public void onClick(DialogInterface dialog, int which, boolean isChecked) { if (isChecked) { // If the user checked the item, add it to the selected items mSelectedItems.add(which); } else if (mSelectedItems.contains(which)) { // Else, if the item is already in the array, remove it mSelectedItems.remove(Integer.valueOf(which)); } } }) // Set the action buttons .setPositiveButton(R.string.ok, new DialogInterface.OnClickListener() { @Override public void onClick(DialogInterface dialog, int id) { // User clicked OK, so save the mSelectedItems results somewhere // or return them to the component that opened the dialog ... } }) .setNegativeButton(R.string.cancel, new DialogInterface.OnClickListener() { @Override public void onClick(DialogInterface dialog, int id) { ... } }); return builder.create(); }
Although both a traditional list and a list with radio buttons
provide a "single choice" action, you should use setSingleChoiceItems()
if you want to persist the user's choice.
That is, if opening the dialog again later should indicate what the user's current choice is,
then you create a list with radio buttons.
Creating a Custom Layout
If you want a custom layout in a dialog, create a layout and add it to an
AlertDialog
by calling setView()
on your AlertDialog.Builder
object.
By default, the custom layout fills the dialog window, but you can still
use AlertDialog.Builder
methods to add buttons and a title.
For example, here's the layout file for the dialog in Figure 5:
<LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" android:orientation="vertical" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content"> <ImageView android:src="@drawable/header_logo" android:layout_width="match_parent" android:layout_height="64dp" android:scaleType="center" android:background="#FFFFBB33" android:contentDescription="@string/app_name" /> <EditText android:id="@+id/username" android:inputType="textEmailAddress" android:layout_width="match_parent" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:layout_marginTop="16dp" android:layout_marginLeft="4dp" android:layout_marginRight="4dp" android:layout_marginBottom="4dp" android:hint="@string/username" /> <EditText android:id="@+id/password" android:inputType="textPassword" android:layout_width="match_parent" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:layout_marginTop="4dp" android:layout_marginLeft="4dp" android:layout_marginRight="4dp" android:layout_marginBottom="16dp" android:fontFamily="sans-serif" android:hint="@string/password"/> </LinearLayout>
Tip: By default, when you set an EditText
element to use the "textPassword"
input type, the font family is set to monospace, so
you should change its font family to "sans-serif"
so that both text fields use
a matching font style.
To inflate the layout in your DialogFragment
,
get a LayoutInflater
with
getLayoutInflater()
and call
inflate()
, where the first parameter
is the layout resource ID and the second parameter is a parent view for the layout.
You can then call setView()
to place the layout in the dialog.
@Override public Dialog onCreateDialog(Bundle savedInstanceState) { AlertDialog.Builder builder = new AlertDialog.Builder(getActivity()); // Get the layout inflater LayoutInflater inflater = getActivity().getLayoutInflater(); // Inflate and set the layout for the dialog // Pass null as the parent view because its going in the dialog layout builder.setView(inflater.inflate(R.layout.dialog_signin, null)) // Add action buttons .setPositiveButton(R.string.signin, new DialogInterface.OnClickListener() { @Override public void onClick(DialogInterface dialog, int id) { // sign in the user ... } }) .setNegativeButton(R.string.cancel, new DialogInterface.OnClickListener() { public void onClick(DialogInterface dialog, int id) { LoginDialogFragment.this.getDialog().cancel(); } }); return builder.create(); }
Tip: If you want a custom dialog,
you can instead display an Activity
as a dialog
instead of using the Dialog
APIs. Simply create an activity and set its theme to
Theme.Holo.Dialog
in the <activity>
manifest element:
<activity android:theme="@android:style/Theme.Holo.Dialog" >
That's it. The activity now displays in a dialog window instead of fullscreen.
Passing Events Back to the Dialog's Host
When the user touches one of the dialog's action buttons or selects an item from its list,
your DialogFragment
might perform the necessary
action itself, but often you'll want to deliver the event to the activity or fragment that
opened the dialog. To do this, define an interface with a method for each type of click event.
Then implement that interface in the host component that will
receive the action events from the dialog.
For example, here's a DialogFragment
that defines an
interface through which it delivers the events back to the host activity:
public class NoticeDialogFragment extends DialogFragment { /* The activity that creates an instance of this dialog fragment must * implement this interface in order to receive event callbacks. * Each method passes the DialogFragment in case the host needs to query it. */ public interface NoticeDialogListener { public void onDialogPositiveClick(DialogFragment dialog); public void onDialogNegativeClick(DialogFragment dialog); } // Use this instance of the interface to deliver action events NoticeDialogListener mListener; // Override the Fragment.onAttach() method to instantiate the NoticeDialogListener @Override public void onAttach(Activity activity) { super.onAttach(activity); // Verify that the host activity implements the callback interface try { // Instantiate the NoticeDialogListener so we can send events to the host mListener = (NoticeDialogListener) activity; } catch (ClassCastException e) { // The activity doesn't implement the interface, throw exception throw new ClassCastException(activity.toString() + " must implement NoticeDialogListener"); } } ... }
The activity hosting the dialog creates an instance of the dialog
with the dialog fragment's constructor and receives the dialog's
events through an implementation of the NoticeDialogListener
interface:
public class MainActivity extends FragmentActivity implements NoticeDialogFragment.NoticeDialogListener{ ... public void showNoticeDialog() { // Create an instance of the dialog fragment and show it DialogFragment dialog = new NoticeDialogFragment(); dialog.show(getSupportFragmentManager(), "NoticeDialogFragment"); } // The dialog fragment receives a reference to this Activity through the // Fragment.onAttach() callback, which it uses to call the following methods // defined by the NoticeDialogFragment.NoticeDialogListener interface @Override public void onDialogPositiveClick(DialogFragment dialog) { // User touched the dialog's positive button ... } @Override public void onDialogNegativeClick(DialogFragment dialog) { // User touched the dialog's negative button ... } }
Because the host activity implements the NoticeDialogListener
—which is
enforced by the onAttach()
callback method shown above—the dialog fragment can use the
interface callback methods to deliver click events to the activity:
public class NoticeDialogFragment extends DialogFragment { ... @Override public Dialog onCreateDialog(Bundle savedInstanceState) { // Build the dialog and set up the button click handlers AlertDialog.Builder builder = new AlertDialog.Builder(getActivity()); builder.setMessage(R.string.dialog_fire_missiles) .setPositiveButton(R.string.fire, new DialogInterface.OnClickListener() { public void onClick(DialogInterface dialog, int id) { // Send the positive button event back to the host activity mListener.onDialogPositiveClick(NoticeDialogFragment.this); } }) .setNegativeButton(R.string.cancel, new DialogInterface.OnClickListener() { public void onClick(DialogInterface dialog, int id) { // Send the negative button event back to the host activity mListener.onDialogNegativeClick(NoticeDialogFragment.this); } }); return builder.create(); } }
Showing a Dialog
When you want to show your dialog, create an instance of your DialogFragment
and call show()
, passing the FragmentManager
and a tag name
for the dialog fragment.
You can get the FragmentManager
by calling
getSupportFragmentManager()
from
the FragmentActivity
or getFragmentManager()
from a Fragment
. For example:
public void confirmFireMissiles() { DialogFragment newFragment = new FireMissilesDialogFragment(); newFragment.show(getSupportFragmentManager(), "missiles"); }
The second argument, "missiles"
, is a unique tag name that the system uses to save
and restore the fragment state when necessary. The tag also allows you to get a handle to
the fragment by calling findFragmentByTag()
.
Showing a Dialog Fullscreen or as an Embedded Fragment
You might have a UI design in which you want a piece of the UI to appear as a dialog in some
situations, but as a full screen or embedded fragment in others (perhaps depending on whether
the device is a large screen or small screen). The DialogFragment
class offers you this flexibility because it can still behave as an embeddable Fragment
.
However, you cannot use AlertDialog.Builder
or other Dialog
objects to build the dialog in this case. If
you want the DialogFragment
to be
embeddable, you must define the dialog's UI in a layout, then load the layout in the
onCreateView()
callback.
Here's an example DialogFragment
that can appear as either a
dialog or an embeddable fragment (using a layout named purchase_items.xml
):
public class CustomDialogFragment extends DialogFragment { /** The system calls this to get the DialogFragment's layout, regardless of whether it's being displayed as a dialog or an embedded fragment. */ @Override public View onCreateView(LayoutInflater inflater, ViewGroup container, Bundle savedInstanceState) { // Inflate the layout to use as dialog or embedded fragment return inflater.inflate(R.layout.purchase_items, container, false); } /** The system calls this only when creating the layout in a dialog. */ @Override public Dialog onCreateDialog(Bundle savedInstanceState) { // The only reason you might override this method when using onCreateView() is // to modify any dialog characteristics. For example, the dialog includes a // title by default, but your custom layout might not need it. So here you can // remove the dialog title, but you must call the superclass to get the Dialog. Dialog dialog = super.onCreateDialog(savedInstanceState); dialog.requestWindowFeature(Window.FEATURE_NO_TITLE); return dialog; } }
And here's some code that decides whether to show the fragment as a dialog or a fullscreen UI, based on the screen size:
public void showDialog() { FragmentManager fragmentManager = getSupportFragmentManager(); CustomDialogFragment newFragment = new CustomDialogFragment(); if (mIsLargeLayout) { // The device is using a large layout, so show the fragment as a dialog newFragment.show(fragmentManager, "dialog"); } else { // The device is smaller, so show the fragment fullscreen FragmentTransaction transaction = fragmentManager.beginTransaction(); // For a little polish, specify a transition animation transaction.setTransition(FragmentTransaction.TRANSIT_FRAGMENT_OPEN); // To make it fullscreen, use the 'content' root view as the container // for the fragment, which is always the root view for the activity transaction.add(android.R.id.content, newFragment) .addToBackStack(null).commit(); } }
For more information about performing fragment transactions, see the Fragments guide.
In this example, the mIsLargeLayout
boolean specifies whether the current device
should use the app's large layout design (and thus show this fragment as a dialog, rather
than fullscreen). The best way to set this kind of boolean is to declare a
bool resource value
with an alternative resource value for different screen sizes. For example, here are two
versions of the bool resource for different screen sizes:
<!-- Default boolean values --> <resources> <bool name="large_layout">false</bool> </resources>
<!-- Large screen boolean values --> <resources> <bool name="large_layout">true</bool> </resources>
Then you can initialize the mIsLargeLayout
value during the activity's
onCreate()
method:
boolean mIsLargeLayout; @Override public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) { super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); setContentView(R.layout.activity_main); mIsLargeLayout = getResources().getBoolean(R.bool.large_layout); }
Showing an activity as a dialog on large screens
Instead of showing a dialog as a fullscreen UI when on small screens, you can accomplish
the same result by showing an Activity
as a dialog when on
large screens. Which approach you choose depends on your app design, but
showing an activity as a dialog is often useful when your app is already designed for small
screens and you'd like to improve the experience on tablets by showing a short-lived activity
as a dialog.
To show an activity as a dialog only when on large screens,
apply the Theme.Holo.DialogWhenLarge
theme to the <activity>
manifest element:
<activity android:theme="@android:style/Theme.Holo.DialogWhenLarge" >
For more information about styling your activities with themes, see the Styles and Themes guide.
Dismissing a Dialog
When the user touches any of the action buttons created with an
AlertDialog.Builder
, the system dismisses the dialog for you.
The system also dismisses the dialog when the user touches an item in a dialog list, except
when the list uses radio buttons or checkboxes. Otherwise, you can manually dismiss your dialog
by calling dismiss()
on your DialogFragment
.
In case you need to perform certain
actions when the dialog goes away, you can implement the onDismiss()
method in your DialogFragment
.
You can also cancel a dialog. This is a special event that indicates the user
explicitly left the dialog without completing the task. This occurs if the user presses the
Back button, touches the screen outside the dialog area,
or if you explicitly call cancel()
on the Dialog
(such as in response to a "Cancel" button in the dialog).
As shown in the example above, you can respond to the cancel event by implementing
onCancel()
in your DialogFragment
class.
Note: The system calls
onDismiss()
upon each event that
invokes the onCancel()
callback. However,
if you call Dialog.dismiss()
or DialogFragment.dismiss()
,
the system calls onDismiss()
but
not onCancel()
. So you should generally
call dismiss()
when the user presses the
positive button in your dialog in order to remove the dialog from view.