Showing simple message dialogs

Question

Hi,

In my activity, I'd like to show simple info dialogs, stuff like:

new AlertDialog.Builder(context).setMessage(message).show();

if I do that, the dialog will leak when I rotate that phone (not to mention it will disappear as well, so the user may miss it). I can use the managed dialogs, but I'm not sure how you use it sensibly for these types of short messages? Looks like you have to do this:

showDialog(SOME_DLG_ID);
...
@Override
onCreateDialog(int id) {
    if (id == SOME_DLG_ID) {
        new AlertDialog.Builder(context).setMessage(message).show();
    }
}

there's no way to pass what the message should be into onCreateDialog since its an override method. I'd hate to make a member variable of the parent activity that just stores whatever the current message should be. How do you all do it?

Thanks

Answer 1

You can implement Activity.onPrepareDialog(int, Dialog) to switch out the message before the dialog is shown on the screen. So you could do something like:

@Override protected void onPrepareDialog(int id, Dialog dialog) {
    if (id == SOME_DLG_ID) {
        ((AlertDialog) dialog).setMessage(message);
    }
}

You'd still have to keep track of the message you're current showing in your activity, but at least this way, you're not creating a Dialog object for each message you want to show.

Answer 2

if I do that, the dialog will leak when I rotate that phone (not to mention it will disappear as well, so the user may miss it)

You can add

<activity 
    android:configChanges="orientation|keyboardHidden"
>

to your AndroidManifest.xml to prevent restarting the activity when the phone rotates. I am using it in my app and my AlertDialog survives the rotation of phone.