Showing DialogFragment without the calling Activity as background

Question

I am using the AlarmManager to pass a PendingIntent to my BroadcastReceiver after, say, 5 minutes. Now, I want to show a DialogFragment to the user, on top of whatever app the user might be using when the alarm goes off. For example, if the user is using Chrome when the alarm goes off, my DialogFragment should popup ABOVE the user's Chrome window.

What I am ending up with instead, is the DialogFragment being shown with a blank activity of my app as the background (as in the following pic)

https://i.stack.imgur.com/Vz9IZ.png

This is the code I am using in my BroadcastReceiver, to launch an FragmentActivity first :

    public class AlarmReceiver extends BroadcastReceiver {

        @Override
        public void onReceive(Context context, Intent intent)
        {
            Intent hardReminderIntent = new Intent(context, AlarmHardActivity.class);
            hardReminderIntent.addFlags(Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK);
            context.startActivity(hardReminderIntent);

        }
}

Next, from this activity, I am popping up the DialogFragment :

public class AlarmHardActivity extends FragmentActivity {

    @Override
    protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        FragmentManager fm = getSupportFragmentManager();
        AlarmHardDialog editNameDialog = new AlarmHardDialog();
        editNameDialog.show(fm, "fragment_dialog");
        //setContentView(R.layout.activity_alarm_hard);
    }

    @Override
    public boolean onCreateOptionsMenu(Menu menu) {
        // Inflate the menu; this adds items to the action bar if it is present.
        //getMenuInflater().inflate(R.menu.activity_alarm_hard, menu);
        return true;
    }

}

My questions :

I could not find a way to call getSupportFragmentManager directly from the onReceive in my BroadcastReceiver, and thus assumed that the only way to obtain a dialog, would be to first call a 'dummy' activity, that creates the dialog. Is there a better way to do this?
Irrespective of whether or not my approach was correct, I expected that since there is no call to setContentView(..) in AlarmHardActivity, there would be no UI rendered for it. Is my understanding wrong? I also tried calling setContentView(..) and then marking the layout to have Theme.NoDisplay and android:alpha="0", but to no avail.

Any help will be much appreciated. Thanks!

score 5 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:15

5

Instead of showing dialog on the activity, better alternative will be making activity look like dialog by using dialog theme and setting margin of all sides to desirable dp, so that activity get shrieked to dialog box size.

For few examples look at these posts: Android Activity as a dialog

Android: how to create a transparent dialog-themed activity

How to set a dialog themed activity width to screen width?

edited May 23 '17 at 12:15

Community

1
1

answered Feb 04 '13 at 13:51

Sourab Sharma

2,940
1
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38

1

Perfect! Exactly what I needed. Also, to ensure that clicks outside the activity didn't cause it to close, I used the answer from this question : http://stackoverflow.com/questions/14028842/how-to-check-if-i-have-touched-inside-or-outside-of-a-modal-activity Cheers! Would still be interesting to know why my approach didn't work though.. – Pritin Tyagaraj Feb 04 '13 at 14:04

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 18 '13 at 16:54

To your questions:

Fragments can be attached only to Activity (ActivityFragment). So yes, you need dummy Activity for this.
Use the invisible theme @android:style/Theme.Translucent.NoTitleBar, calling setContentView isn't necessary. But this theme isn't Holo compatible (in dialog you would have old Android look). I solved this with custom theme (I use this from ICS, but it should work from HONEYCOMB):

<style name="InvisibleTheme" parent="@android:style/Theme.Holo.Light">
    <item name="android:windowActionBar">false</item>
    <item name="android:windowNoTitle">true</item>

    <item name="android:windowBackground">@android:color/transparent</item>
    <item name="android:colorBackgroundCacheHint">@null</item>
    <item name="android:windowIsTranslucent">true</item>
    <!-- Note that we use the base animation style here (that is no animations) because we really have no idea how this kind of activity will be used. -->
    <item name="android:windowAnimationStyle">@android:style/Animation</item>
</style>

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Feb 04 '13 at 11:28

0

It is impossible to show this dialog without Activity. You can try to run your app like you have on your screenshoot, but with transparent background and hidden ActionBar. But i have never tried to do that so I'm not sure if it will work.

answered Feb 04 '13 at 11:28

Michał Z.

4,119
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Showing DialogFragment without the calling Activity as background

3 Answers3