Android: Clickable hyperlinks in AlertDialog

Question

What I am trying to accomplish is to have clickable hyperlinks in the message text displayed by an AlertDialog. While the AlertDialog implementation happily underlines and colors any hyperlinks (defined using <a href="..."> in the string resource passed to Builder.setMessage) supplied the links do not become clickable.

The code I am currently using looks like this:

new AlertDialog.Builder(MainActivity.this).setTitle(
        R.string.Title_About).setMessage(
        getResources().getText(R.string.about))
        .setPositiveButton(android.R.string.ok, null)
        .setIcon(R.drawable.icon).show();

I'd like to avoid using a WebView to just display a text snippet, so any advice how to get this working is much appreciated!

Answer 1

I do this by specifying the alert box in an XML resource and loading that. See for example the about.xml (see the ABOUT_URL id) that gets instantiated near the end of ChandlerQE.java. The relevant parts from the java code:

LayoutInflater inflater = 
    (LayoutInflater)getSystemService(Context.LAYOUT_INFLATER_SERVICE);
View view = (View) inflater.inflate(R.layout.about, null);

new AlertDialog.Builder(ChandlerQE.this)
.setTitle(R.string.about)
.setView(view)

Answer 2

JFTR, here comes the solution which I figured out after some time:

View view = View.inflate(MainActivity.this, R.layout.about, null);
TextView textView = (TextView) view.findViewById(R.id.message);
textView.setMovementMethod(LinkMovementMethod.getInstance());
textView.setText(R.string.Text_About);
new AlertDialog.Builder(MainActivity.this).setTitle(
        R.string.Title_About).setView(view)
        .setPositiveButton(android.R.string.ok, null)
        .setIcon(R.drawable.icon).show();

The corresponding about.xml borrowed as a fragment from the Android sources looks like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<ScrollView xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    android:id="@+id/scrollView" android:layout_width="fill_parent"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:paddingTop="2dip"
    android:paddingBottom="12dip" android:paddingLeft="14dip"
    android:paddingRight="10dip">
    <TextView android:id="@+id/message" style="?android:attr/textAppearanceMedium"
        android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:padding="5dip" android:linksClickable="true" />
</ScrollView>

The important parts are setting linksClickable to true and setMovementMethod(LinkMovementMethod.getInstance()).

Answer 3

If you are only showing some text and URL[s] in your dialog perhaps the solution is simpler

public static class MyOtherAlertDialog {

 public static AlertDialog create(Context context) {
  final TextView message = new TextView(context);
  // i.e.: R.string.dialog_message =>
            // "Test this dialog following the link to dtmilano.blogspot.com"
  final SpannableString s = 
               new SpannableString(context.getText(R.string.dialog_message));
  Linkify.addLinks(s, Linkify.WEB_URLS);
  message.setText(s);
  message.setMovementMethod(LinkMovementMethod.getInstance());

  return new AlertDialog.Builder(context)
   .setTitle(R.string.dialog_title)
   .setCancelable(true)
   .setIcon(android.R.drawable.ic_dialog_info)
   .setPositiveButton(R.string.dialog_action_dismiss, null)
   .setView(message)
   .create();
 }
}

as shown here http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/up29wTQeK_zuz-LLvre9wQ?feat=directlink

Answer 4

hello tg I used your code,but it donot direct direct (Internet) site.it only could click. Heikki Toivonen method is good which can direct direct (Internet) site,in the xml add android:autoLink="web".my sdk 2.0.1

Answer 5

I combined some of the options discussed above to come up with this function that works for me. pass the result to dialog builder's SetView() method.

public ScrollView LinkifyText(String message) 
{
    ScrollView svMessage = new ScrollView(this); 
    TextView tvMessage = new TextView(this);

    SpannableString spanText = new SpannableString(message);

    Linkify.addLinks(spanText, Linkify.ALL);
    tvMessage.setText(spanText);
    tvMessage.setMovementMethod(LinkMovementMethod.getInstance());

    svMessage.setPadding(14, 2, 10, 12);
    svMessage.addView(tvMessage);

    return svMessage;
}

Answer 6

Instead of ...

AlertDialog.Builder dialogBuilder = new AlertDialog.Builder(this);
dialogBuilder.setTitle(R.string.my_title);
dialogBuilder.setMessage(R.string.my_text);

... I now use:

AlertDialog.Builder dialogBuilder = new AlertDialog.Builder(this);
dialogBuilder.setTitle(R.string.my_title);
TextView textView = new TextView(this);
textView.setMovementMethod(LinkMovementMethod.getInstance());
textView.setText(R.string.my_text);
dialogBuilder.setView(textView);

Answer 7

I didn't really like the currently most popular answer because it significantly changes the formatting of the message in the dialog.

Here's a solution that will linkify your dialog text without otherwise changing the text styling:

    // Linkify the message
    final SpannableString s = new SpannableString(msg);
    Linkify.addLinks(s, Linkify.ALL);

    final AlertDialog d = new AlertDialog.Builder(activity)
        .setPositiveButton(android.R.string.ok, null)
        .setIcon(R.drawable.icon)
        .setMessage( s )
        .create();

    d.show();

    // Make the textview clickable. Must be called after show()
    ((TextView)d.findViewById(android.R.id.message)).setMovementMethod(LinkMovementMethod.getInstance());

Answer 8

Actually, if you want to simply use a string without dealing with all the views, the fastest way is to find message textview and linkify it:

d.setMessage("Insert your cool string with links and stuff here");
Linkify.addLinks((TextView) d.findViewById(android.R.id.message), Linkify.ALL);