Question

When a user clicks a Button in my App (which is printed in a SurfaceView), I’d like a text Dialog to appear and I would like to store the result in a String. I’d like the text Dialog to overlay the current screen. How can I do this?

Answer 1

Sounds like a good opportunity to use an AlertDialog.

As basic as it seems, Android does not have a built-in dialog to do this (as far as I know). Fortunately, it’s just a little extra work on top of creating a standard AlertDialog. You simply need to create an EditText for the user to input data, and set it as the view of the AlertDialog. You can customize the type of input allowed using setInputType, if you need.

If you’re able to use a member variable, you can simply set the variable to the value of the EditText, and it will persist after the dialog has dismissed. If you can’t use a member variable, you may need to use a listener to send the string value to the right place. (I can edit and elaborate more if this is what you need).

Within your class:

private String m_Text = "";

Within the OnClickListener of your button (or in a function called from there):

AlertDialog.Builder builder = new AlertDialog.Builder(this);
builder.setTitle("Title");

// Set up the input
final EditText input = new EditText(this);
// Specify the type of input expected; this, for example, sets the input as a password, and will mask the text
input.setInputType(InputType.TYPE_CLASS_TEXT | InputType.TYPE_TEXT_VARIATION_PASSWORD);
builder.setView(input);

// Set up the buttons
builder.setPositiveButton("OK", new DialogInterface.OnClickListener() { 
    @Override
    public void onClick(DialogInterface dialog, int which) {
        m_Text = input.getText().toString();
    }
});
builder.setNegativeButton("Cancel", new DialogInterface.OnClickListener() {
    @Override
    public void onClick(DialogInterface dialog, int which) {
        dialog.cancel();
    }
});

builder.show();