Question

I need to show an AlertDialog with a ListView and a context menu for the ListView items. I prefer to use AlertDialog.Builder and call setItems(), so the Builder creates a ListView inside the AlertDialog with stylized layout for me. For the stylizing it uses internal Android resources, so I cannot reimplement it in my code.

The problem is that I cannot catch a context menu item click event because of default AlertDialog.onMenuItemSelected() implementation, which does not forward such events to the parent:

public boolean onMenuItemSelected(int featureId, MenuItem item) {
    return false;
}

I cannot extend AlertDialog.Builder class and force it to create an instance of my own AlertDialog with onMenuItemSelected() overridden because I need to override AlertDialog.Builder.create() for that. But it uses a private P variable, which is not accessible from a derived class:

    public AlertDialog create() {
        final AlertDialog dialog = new AlertDialog(P.mContext, mTheme, false);
        P.apply(dialog.mAlert);
        dialog.setCancelable(P.mCancelable);
        if (P.mCancelable) {
            dialog.setCanceledOnTouchOutside(true);
        }
        dialog.setOnCancelListener(P.mOnCancelListener);
        if (P.mOnKeyListener != null) {
            dialog.setOnKeyListener(P.mOnKeyListener);
        }
        return dialog;
    }

Is there a way to force AlertDialog.Builder to construct a custom AlertDialog (with onMenuItemSelected method overridden)?

Answer 1

I still found no solution for the question, but I found some problems, which makes the solution useless. For Android 2.1, built-in ListView items (android.R.layout.select_dialog_item) are displayed as black text on dark grey background, ListView items are not separated from the dialog message (setMessage()), etc.

I finally switched back to my own AlertDialog with custom layout for ListView and its items (AlertDialog.Builer not used). Context menu events can be easily catched this way.

Luksprog, thanks a lot for your comments. But the main idea was to use as many stylized layouts, as possible. AFAIK, no standard layouts (android.R.layout.*) offer the buttons you mentioned. Also, an item could be removed occasionally with the button. With a context menu, at least two click required to remove an item.