Prevent dialog dismissal on screen rotation in Android

Question

I am trying to prevent dialogs built with Alert builder from being dismissed when the Activity is restarted.

If I overload the onConfigurationChanged method I can successfully do this and reset the layout to correct orientation but I lose sticky text feature of edittext. So in solving the dialog problem I have created this edittext problem.

If I save the strings from the edittext and reassign them in the onCofiguration change they still seem to default to initial value not what was entered before rotation. Even if I force an invalidate does seem to update them.

I really need to solve either the dialog problem or the edittext problem.

Thanks for the help.

Answer 1

The best way to avoid this problem nowadays is by using a DialogFragment.

Create a new class which extends DialogFragment. Override onCreateDialog and return your old Dialog or an AlertDialog.

Then you can show it with DialogFragment.show(fragmentManager, tag).

Here's an example with a Listener:

public class MyDialogFragment extends DialogFragment {

    public interface YesNoListener {
        void onYes();

        void onNo();
    }

    @Override
    public void onAttach(Activity activity) {
        super.onAttach(activity);
        if (!(activity instanceof YesNoListener)) {
            throw new ClassCastException(activity.toString() + " must implement YesNoListener");
        }
    }

    @Override
    public Dialog onCreateDialog(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        return new AlertDialog.Builder(getActivity())
                .setTitle(R.string.dialog_my_title)
                .setMessage(R.string.dialog_my_message)
                .setPositiveButton(android.R.string.yes, new DialogInterface.OnClickListener() {

                    @Override
                    public void onClick(DialogInterface dialog, int which) {
                        ((YesNoListener) getActivity()).onYes();
                    }
                })
                .setNegativeButton(android.R.string.no, new DialogInterface.OnClickListener() {

                    @Override
                    public void onClick(DialogInterface dialog, int which) {
                        ((YesNoListener) getActivity()).onNo();
                    }
                })
                .create();
    }
}

And in the Activity you call:

new MyDialogFragment().show(getSupportFragmentManager(), "tag"); // or getFragmentManager() in API 11+

This answer helps explain these other three questions (and their answers):

• Android Best way of avoid Dialogs to dismiss after a device rotation
• Android DialogFragment vs Dialog
• How can I show a DialogFragment using compatibility package?