How to create a Dialog box in Android - Part 1

Hi again! We are back with another tutorial on Android notifications. Make sure you go through the tutorial on Toast Notification before reading on.

In Android you can use a dialog box with one, two, or three buttons or none at all. You can also have a list of selectable items that consists of checkboxes or radio buttons.

For creating these dialog boxes we will be using AlertDialog which is an extension of Dialog class from Android API library. In this tutorial we will be creating four different types of dialog boxes -

An alert box with a single button
A dialog box with two buttons
A dialog box containing a list
A dialog box containing checkboxes

Note:

We will be using Android Platform 1.5 for developing our application.

To demonstrate how to create dialog boxes firstly we will be creating a basic application with four buttons and clicking on each of these buttons will display a different kind of dialog box. We will be using XML based layout for our Application's User Interface. Create a new Android project with the following properties -

Project Name - DialogBox
Name of the Application - Dialog Box
Package name - com.botskool.DialogBox
Activity Name - Dialog Box

There will be four buttons and a string as listed below -

information string
alert button (This button will be used to display an alert box)
yesno button (This will be used to display a dialog box with Yes/No buttons)
selectlist button (This will be used to display a dialog box which contains a list)
selectlistwithcheckbox (This will be used to display a dialog box which contains a list along with checkbox)

Copy the following code in DialogBox.java -

package com.botskool.DialogBox;

import android.app.Activity;

import android.app.AlertDialog;

import android.content.DialogInterface;

import android.os.Bundle;

import android.view.View;

import android.view.View.OnClickListener;

import android.widget.Button;

import android.widget.Toast;

public class DialogBox extends Activity implements OnClickListener{

/** Called when the activity is first created. */

@Override

public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {

super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);

setContentView(R.layout.main);

/** We need to set up a click listener on the alert button */

Button alert = (Button) findViewById(R.id.alertbutton);

alert.setOnClickListener(this);

/** We need to set up a click listener on the yesno button */

Button yesno = (Button) findViewById(R.id.yesnobutton);

yesno.setOnClickListener(this);

/** We need to set up a click listener on the selectlist button */

Button selectlist = (Button) findViewById(R.id.selectlist);

selectlist.setOnClickListener(this);

/** We need to set up a click listener on the selectlistwithcheckbox button */

Button selectlistwithcheckbox = (Button) findViewById(R.id.selectlistwithcheckbox);

selectlistwithcheckbox.setOnClickListener(this);

}

public void onClick(View view) {

/** check whether the alert button has been clicked */

if (view == findViewById(R.id.alertbutton)) {

// Code here to display alert box

}

/** check whether the yesno button has been clicked */

if (view == findViewById(R.id.yesnobutton)) {

// Code here to display the dialog box with Yes/No button

}

/** check whether the selectlist button has been clicked */

if (view == findViewById(R.id.selectlist)) {

//Code here to display the dialog box containing a list.

}

/** check whether the selectlistwithcheckbox button has been clicked */

if (view == findViewById(R.id.selectlistwithcheckbox)) {

//Code here to display the dialog box with checkbox

}

Copy the following code in main.xml -

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

<LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"

android:orientation="vertical"

android:layout_width="fill_parent"

android:layout_height="fill_parent"

>

<TextView

android:layout_width="fill_parent"