CODEWITHSUNDEEP
androidandroid-dialog
Al Lelopath
Al Lelopath

Reputation: 6778

Format text in AlertDialog.Builder

I am unable to get text in an AlertDialog to display in bold or italic.

I've tried formatting directly and also using the CharSequence utilties from the Android string-resource page but I always get just plain text.
What am I doing wrong?

MyFragment.java

String idFormatted = String.format(resources.getString(R.string.id));
CharSequence idStyledText = Html.fromHtml(idFormatted);

CharSequence nameItalic = Utilities.italic(resources.getString(R.string.name));

String typeFormatted = String.format(resources.getString(R.string.type));
CharSequence typeStyledText = Html.fromHtml(idFormatted);

AlertDialog.Builder builder = new AlertDialog.Builder(mContext);
builder.setPositiveButton("Dismiss",
        new DialogInterface.OnClickListener() {
            @Override
            public void onClick(DialogInterface dialog, int which) {
            }
        }).setIcon(android.R.drawable.ic_dialog_info);

builder.setMessage( idFormatted + myData.getId() + "\t\t" +  nameItalic + myData.getName() + "\t\t" +  typeFormatted + myData.getType() );   
Dialog dialog = builder.create();
dialog.setTitle("Details");
dialog.show();

strings.xml

<string name="id"><i>Id: </i></string>
<string name="name"><i>Name: </i></string>
<string name="type"><i>Type: </i></string>

Edit: -------------------------------------------------------------
Mohammad Arman suggests that the strings from the string.xml will not retain the html. This seems likely to be true, though I can't prove it yet.

Based on his and Farbod Salamat-Zadeh's answer, I tried the code below, but still the result is the same, just plain text.

Spanned idLabel = Html.fromHtml("<i>" + resources.getString(R.string.id) + "</i>");
Spanned nameLabel = Html.fromHtml("<i>" + resources.getString(R.string.name) + "</i>");
Spanned typeLabel = Html.fromHtml("<i>" + resources.getString(R.string.type) + "</i>");
...
builder.setMessage(idLabel.toString() + myData.getId() + "\t\t" + nameLabel + myData.getName());

Edit2: -----------------------------------------------------------
I've tried as Keelan has suggested:

<string name="italic_string"><![CDATA[<i>italic-string</i>]]></string>

and then:

String formattedText = getString(R.string.italic_string);
Spanned result = Html.fromHtml(formattedText);
builder.setMessage(result);

This works.

Upvotes: 7

Views: 3819

Answers (3)

user1544337
user1544337

Reputation:

You can't simply store HTML in a strings.xml file. You need to put them in CDATA, like so:

<string name="id"><![CDATA[<i>Id: </i>]]></string>

Then to display a formatted string, you still need to use Html.fromHtml().

Upvotes: 6

Mohammad Arman
Mohammad Arman

Reputation: 7065

You need to format the html version in a separate String variable in Java class (otherwise for some reason it won't work).

String myId = <i>Id: </i>;
String myName = <b>Name: </b>

Then you have to add this in the textView like bellow:

textView1.setText(Html.fromHtml(myId +" "+ "1234");
textView2.setText(Html.fromHtml(myName +" "+ "Al Lelopath")

Why your approach is not working

It's because as you are importing the string from string.xml it will lose the attribute and send it as a plain text. And that's why Android could not take that as html.

Upvotes: 1

Farbod Salamat-Zadeh
Farbod Salamat-Zadeh

Reputation: 20080

You can get text anywhere to display in bold or italic - I use the following;

Spanned italicText = Html.fromHtml("<i>" + "My italic text" + "</i>");
Spanned boldText = Html.fromHtml("<b>" + "My boldtext" + "</b>");
// You can use different HTML tags depending on what you want.

Upvotes: 2

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