Question

Hi I am popping up dialog to take comments from user. And returning a value according to that. That “rcomment” is a global variable. And it returns null. This is not working. What am I doing wrong ?

 public String getDoNotBoardDialog(final int groupposition)
     {
         final Dialog dia = new Dialog(this);
         dia.requestWindowFeature(Window.FEATURE_NO_TITLE); 
         dia.setContentView(R.layout.donotboard);
         final EditText donotedit = (EditText) dia.findViewById(R.id.donotboardcomment);
         donotedit.setText(""); 

         Button button1 = (Button) dia.findViewById(R.id.donotboardbutton);
         button1.setOnClickListener(new OnClickListener() {
             public void onClick(View v) {
                 r =  donotedit.getText().toString();
                 String boardingComment = getString(R.string.donotboard) + " " + r;
                 PostCommentForAC(groupposition, boardingComment);
                 Intent intent = new Intent(getBaseContext(), TestExList.class); 
                 intent.putExtra("EmpID", empid);
                 startActivity(intent);
                 rcomment = "true";
                 dia.cancel();
        }
       });
          Button button2 = (Button) dia.findViewById(R.id.boardbutton);
          button2.setOnClickListener(new OnClickListener() {
              public void onClick(View v) {
                rcomment = "false";
            dia.cancel();
        }
       });
      dia.show();
    return rcomment;
     }

Answer 1

Edit: dont use below code. It will kill your app (ANR).

You would have to wait before you can return something. A quick (but really dirty) solution would be to add some wait/notify mechanism like so: (written blind so might contain some errors).

public String getDoNotBoardDialog(final int groupposition) {
     // some Object to wait on
     final Object waitOnMe = new Object();
     final Dialog dia = new Dialog(this);
     dia.requestWindowFeature(Window.FEATURE_NO_TITLE); 
     dia.setContentView(R.layout.donotboard);
     final EditText donotedit = (EditText) dia.findViewById(R.id.donotboardcomment);
     donotedit.setText(""); 

     Button button1 = (Button) dia.findViewById(R.id.donotboardbutton);
     button1.setOnClickListener(new OnClickListener() {
         public void onClick(View v) {
             r =  donotedit.getText().toString();
             String boardingComment = getString(R.string.donotboard) + " " + r;
             PostCommentForAC(groupposition, boardingComment);
             Intent intent = new Intent(getBaseContext(), TestExList.class); 
             intent.putExtra("EmpID", empid);
             startActivity(intent);
             rcomment = "true";
             dia.cancel();
            // stop waiting.
            synchronized(waitOnMe) {
                waitOnMe.notify();
            }
    }
   });
      Button button2 = (Button) dia.findViewById(R.id.boardbutton);
      button2.setOnClickListener(new OnClickListener() {
          public void onClick(View v) {
            rcomment = "false";
        dia.cancel();
        // stop waiting.
        synchronized(waitOnMe) {
            waitOnMe.notify();
        }
    }
   });
  dia.show();
  // this wait's until someone calls notify
  synchronized (waitOnMe) {
      try {
          waitOnMe.wait();
      } catch (InterruptedException e) {}
  }
return rcomment;
 }

It’s problematic though. You could miss the notify() and thus never stop waiting (e.g. when you close the dialog via the “back” button). A much cleaner and safer solution would be to use some Callback mechanism (you call some method in your program from each onClick) to get a value from the dialog.