Develop Reference

Xamarin Android Simple Input Text Popup

I have the ability to make my own popup, with dialogs, but I don't need anything complex. I was wondering if there was a simple function I could call that would make a popup where the user entered text and then return to me that text for use.
Sorta like these popups
But with one where the user would enter text.
Fairly new so if there is something like this I wouldn't mind an example to go with it. Thanks.

If you are using Android native UI, then you can easily create an AlertDialog and add a EditText to the dialog.
EditText et = new EditText(this);
AlertDialog.Builder ad = new AlertDialog.Builder (this);
ad.setTitle ("Type text");
ad.setView(et); // <----
ad.show();

How do I pass arguments to a Dialog box in Android?

Google decided to make a single-threaded user interface that doesn't have modal dialogs. I'm sure most of you have found that nothing updates until your function returns because everything is event driven on a single thread (by "law").
If I have a simple alert-box, such as "Are You Sure?" (example only), with a Yes and No button, then I have to assign callbacks to the buttons rather than having a simple return value (no modal dialogs). That's fine, even though a return value would vastly simplify my problem (arguments stay local to the caller), although this would stop the calling activity from responding (modal).
Imagine now if I have a list of items and the user attempts to perform some operation. The dialog must now have some way to pass WHICH item I want to perform the operation on to the button's callback, but I can't seem to find any mechanism in the API for passing this along to the onclick handler. Using non-local variables is a work-around, but messy.
How can I pass this information along cleanly? Does anyone have some sort of hack that would somehow "fake" a modal dialog that can return a value (I'm not seeing how).

Create a custom dialog that extends the default android Dialog and add the information you need and pass on the constructor.
See more here: How can I pass values between a Dialog and an Activity?

I am not sure what exactly what do you want to achieve. Not sure if your problems is in the communication between the activity to the dialog or dialog to the activity or both.
Anyway, I have some experience on Android and I really recommend you to achieve the communication between activities, fragments, even dialog (DialogFragments) to use one of these libraries. At the beggining could be a little bit hard to understand how work, but the result is faster and cleaner code, of course offers you more flexibility.
Take a look to:
https://github.com/beworker/tinybus --> less used but it is awesome
https://github.com/greenrobot/EventBus --> more extended and used for the community
Hope to help you!

In a situation like this, I Created a new string array entry in the strings.xml in values folder like this:
<string-array name="array">
<item>1</item>
<item>2</item>
</string-array>
And then create a dialog using Dialog builder like this:
AlertDialog.Builder dialog=new AlertDialog.Builder(this);
LayoutInflater infl=this.getLayoutInflater();
Resources res=getResources();
dialog.setSingleChoiceItems(R.array.alphabets, 0,new OnClickListener() {
public void onClick(DialogInterface dialog, int which) {
mReturnVariable=which;
}
});
dialog.create().show();
So the mReturnVariable contains the user selected item index .Hope that solves the problem

I passed the required arguments to the Alert Dialog using View Binding in Android Latest version.
private ConnectDialogBinding connectDialogBinding;
private String chargerID;
private void connectDialog() {
// Create the object of
// AlertDialog Builder class
AlertDialog.Builder builder = new AlertDialog.Builder(ConnectActivity.this);
connectDialogBinding = ConnectDialogBinding.inflate(getLayoutInflater());
builder.setView(connectDialogBinding.getRoot());
connectDialogBinding.txtID.setText(chargerID);
builder.setCancelable(false);
// Create the Alert dialog
AlertDialog alertDialog = builder.create();
// Show the Alert Dialog box
alertDialog.show();
connectDialogBinding.cancelBtn.setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener() {
#Override
public void onClick(View v) {
alertDialog.cancel();
}
});
}
enter image description here

Robotium: let Solo click on DatePicker in localized build

I am performing a click on the "Set"-button in a DatePickerDialog with Robotium via
solo.clickOnButton("Set");
If I now change the language of the testing device to a different language, Robotium is not able to find the button, as the text is not "Set" anymore but the translated word.
Is there any possibility to access the button in the Picker in a different way?
As in Jelly Bean the DatePicker lost the "Cancel" button, I cannot use the clickOnButton(int index) method.
The only idea I have would be to use setButton on the DatePickerDialog to have access to the localized string resource of the button text or keep a reference to the button.
But maybe someone knows of a better way to gain access without the need of custom button text.
Regards
Kim

If you have access to the source code, you can use both getString() and getView():
Button button = (Button) solo.getView(R.id.x);
solo.clickOnView(button);
There is also solo.getString(R.string.x) that is good to use for localized builds.

I know that it's not the best solution but it works for me:
solo.clickOnButton(0);

Here's my suggestion (assuming you are showing the dialog via a DialogFragment): I have a SelectDateDialogFragment with a unique TAG and an onCreateDialog() method which creates a DatePickerDialog. I then show the dialog via selectDateDialogfragment.show(getFragmentManager(), SelectDateDialogFragment.TAG). In the Robotium tests, I use code like the following to click the dialog's buttons:
solo.clickOnView(editDateButton);
solo.waitForFragmentByTag(SelectDateDialogFragment.TAG);
solo.setDatePicker(0, 2000, 1, 1);
SelectDateDialogFragment dialogFragment = (SelectDateDialogFragment) activity.getFragmentManager()
.findFragmentByTag(SelectDateDialogFragment.TAG);
DatePickerDialog dialog = (DatePickerDialog) dialogFragment.getDialog();
Button okButton = dialog.getButton(DialogInterface.BUTTON_POSITIVE);
solo.clickOnView(okButton);
solo.waitForDialogToClose();

I would like to share some details with you.
First:
solo.clickOnButton(0);
worked well for me some time. But as the new Dialogs don't have the "Set" and "Cancel" buttons, but instead "Cancel" and "OK", this solution would now select the cancel button on newer devices while just switching to
solo.clickOnButton(1);
would break the test for older devices.
So I migrated to csoltenborn's solution with two modifications:
as I want to stay compatible with older devices I use the SupportFragmentManager
as my fragment is nested in another fragment depending on the device and it's orientation, I sometimes have to access a certain fragments ChildFragmentManager.
This is my solution, maybe it can add to csoltenborn's good answer:
DialogFragment dialogFrag;
Fragment outerFragment = getActivity().getSupportFragmentManager().findFragmentByTag("outerFragmentTAG");
if (outerFragment == null) {
dialogFrag = (DialogFragment)getActivity().getSupportFragmentManager().findFragmentByTag("datePicker");
} else {
dialogFrag = (DialogFragment)outerFragment.getChildFragmentManager().findFragmentByTag("datePicker");
}
Button okButton = ((DatePickerDialog)dialogFrag.getDialog()).getButton(DialogInterface.BUTTON_POSITIVE);
solo.clickOnView(okButton);

Why is it discouraged to directly instantiate the Dialog class?

I want to show a dialog when the user clicks on an option menu inside an Activity. I first wanted to do this using the Dialog class. The code is something similar to the one below.
final Dialog d = new Dialog(this);
d.setContentView(R.layout.customDialog);
d.setTitle("Sample title");
data = (EditText) d.findViewById(R.id.data);
button = (Button) d.findViewById(R.id.aButton);
d.show();
button.setOnClickListner(new View.OnClickListner() {
// grab data from edittext and save it to some var
d.dismiss();
});
Something like that. The dev guide suggests I not instantiate directly a Dialog class. Is there something particularly bad about this approach ?

The android dev guide adds a lot of extra info to help developers avoid tasks which take up a lot of processing time. Instantiating a Dialog class directly probably takes up a lot more processing time.

The system keeps a cache of dialogs, so you don't have to manage it yourself. Each dialog is created only once and stored somewhere so it can be reused later. That's because creating a dialog is computationally expensive, I guess. The system gives you the hooks to create the dialog the first time it's needed and to prepare it just before showing

TabHost and/or ViewFlipper DialogProblem

I have some problems with the TabHost and ViewFlipper.
Here are the ViewFlipper as I expect the answer to this will also do the job in the TabHost.
I would like to have a Custom Dialog shown when the user reach a certain stage, but I can not figure out which Context to hand it?
final Dialog congratsDialog = new Dialog(MyActivity.this);
congratsDialog.requestWindowFeature(Window.FEATURE_NO_TITLE);
congratsDialog.setContentView(R.layout.congrats_dialog);
TextView name = (TextView) congratsDialog.findViewById(R.id.congratsDialogName);
name.setText(player.getName());
This will result in a NullPointerException in the line were I try to setText.
I have also tried flipper.getContext(), getBaseContext(), getApplicationContext() and have also tried other crazy thing but every time I get a NullPointerException

setContentView() to dialog is trade off over android version if you are using android 2.0 or less it would not work use versions 2.0 or above for this function. Otherwise if you want to do for all version then use setContentView(View) where View is from xml layout of congrats dialog after inflating it.
Please try this and let me know if you got solution.