Displaying dialogs with DialogFragment

A DialogFragment is a special fragment subclass that is designed for creating and hosting dialogs. Strictly speaking, you do not need to host your dialog within a fragment, but doing so allows the FragmentManager to manage the state of the dialog and automatically restore the dialog when a configuration change occurs.

Create a DialogFragment

To create a DialogFragment, first create a class that extends DialogFragment, and override onCreateDialog(), as shown in the following example.

Kotlin

class PurchaseConfirmationDialogFragment : DialogFragment() {
    override fun onCreateDialog(savedInstanceState: Bundle?): Dialog =
            AlertDialog.Builder(requireContext())
                .setMessage(getString(R.string.order_confirmation))
                .setPositiveButton(getString(R.string.ok)) { _,_ -> }
                .create()

    companion object {
        const val TAG = "PurchaseConfirmationDialog"
    }
}

Java

public class PurchaseConfirmationDialogFragment extends DialogFragment {
   @NonNull
   @Override
   public Dialog onCreateDialog(@Nullable Bundle savedInstanceState) {
       return new AlertDialog.Builder(requireContext())
               .setMessage(getString(R.string.order_confirmation))
               .setPositiveButton(getString(R.string.ok), (dialog, which) -> {} )
               .create();
   }

   public static String TAG = "PurchaseConfirmationDialog";
}

Similar to how onCreateView() should create a root View in an ordinary fragment, onCreateDialog() should create a Dialog to display as part of the DialogFragment. The DialogFragment handles displaying the Dialog at appropriate states in the fragment's lifecycle.

Just like with onCreateView(), you can return any subclass of Dialog from onCreateDialog() and are not limited to using only AlertDialog.

Showing the DialogFragment

It is not necessary to manually create a FragmentTransaction to display your DialogFragment. Instead, use the show() method to display your dialog. You can pass a reference to a FragmentManager and a String to use as a FragmentTransaction tag. When creating a DialogFragment from within a Fragment, you must use the Fragment's child FragmentManager to ensure that the state is properly restored after configuration changes. A non-null tag allows you to use findFragmentByTag() to retrieve the DialogFragment at a later time.

Kotlin

// From another Fragment or Activity where you wish to show this
// PurchaseConfirmationDialogFragment.
PurchaseConfirmationDialogFragment().show(
     childFragmentManager, PurchaseConfirmationDialog.TAG)

Java

// From another Fragment or Activity where you wish to show this
// PurchaseConfirmationDialogFragment.
new PurchaseConfirmationDialogFragment().show(
       getChildFragmentManager(), PurchaseConfirmationDialog.TAG);

For more control over the FragmentTransaction, you can use the show() overload that accepts an existing FragmentTransaction.

DialogFragment lifecycle

A DialogFragment follows the standard fragment lifecycle. In addition DialogFragment has a few additional lifecycle callbacks. The most common ones are as follows:

  • onCreateDialog() - Override this callback to provide a Dialog for the fragment to manage and display.
  • onDismiss() - Override this callback if you need to perform any custom logic when your Dialog is dismissed, such as releasing resources, unsubscribing from observable resources, and so on.
  • onCancel() - Override this callback if you need to perform any custom logic when your Dialog is cancelled.

DialogFragment also contains methods to dismiss or set the cancellability of your DialogFragment:

  • dismiss() - Dismiss the fragment and its dialog. If the fragment was added to the back stack, all back stack state up to and including this entry are popped. Otherwise, a new transaction is committed to remove the fragment.
  • setCancellable() - Control whether the shown Dialog is cancelable. This method should be used instead of directly calling Dialog.setCancelable(boolean).

Notice that you do not override onCreateView() or onViewCreated() when using a DialogFragment with a Dialog. Dialogs are not only views—they have their own window. As such, it is insufficient to override onCreateView(). Moreover, onViewCreated() is never called on a custom DialogFragment unless you've overridden onCreateView() and provided a non-null view.

Using custom views

You can create a DialogFragment and display a dialog by overriding onCreateView(), either giving it a layoutId as you would with a typical fragment or using the DialogFragment constructor introduced in Fragment 1.3.0-alpha02.

The View returned by onCreateView() is automatically added to the dialog. In most cases, this means that you don't need to override onCreateDialog(), as the default empty dialog is populated with your view.

Certain subclasses of DialogFragment, such as BottomSheetDialogFragment, embed your view in a dialog that is styled as a bottom sheet.