CODEWITHSUNDEEP
androiddialogfragment
3alto
3alto

Reputation: 189

Questions about using Dialogs in android?

I'll get straight to the point. Dialog's confuse the hell out of me. Why? Because it seems as though there are 5 different ways on instantiating them, giving them a custom layout, and using them. To add insult to injury the documentation on them is very poor. so I'm going to post the main questions I have here, and hope you guys can clear some of the confusion for me. 

Question One: 
what is the Real Difference between Dialog, and DialogFragment?

Question Two:
why is it better to use onCreateView, rather than onCreateDialog? 
furthermore, Whats the difference?

Question Three:
why not just do *Dialog dialog = new Dialog();* everytime i need one,
rather than subclass DialogFragment constantly?

I apologize if this thread may not seem like a good fit for the community, but please keep in mind these are very real, and un-answered questions. Of all the tutorials I've read, from slidenerd-to-vogella-to-Stack everything explains the How, but not Why, which is just as important, if not more. Thanks Guys!

Upvotes: 0

Views: 45

Answers (1)

fweigl
fweigl

Reputation: 22038

  1. The difference between them is that a Dialog can only show a custom view but has no means in itself for you to interact with it's views / widgets programmatically at the runtime of the Dialog (ie when it's shown). DialogFragment extends Fragment and has all capabilities and the lifecycle of a Fragment (or very similar to them when used as a dialog). DialogFragment can also be used as a 'normal' fragment, which means you could use a DialogFragment to show a dialog on a tablet or have it live inside an activity (ie full-screen) on a phone.

  2. If the DialogFragment is also to be used as a Fragment, it has to return a View via onCreateView, so you'll have to implement onCreateView anyway. You can probably avoid code repetition if you only implement onCreateView and not onCreateView and onCreateDialog. But I've never heard someone say that is is 'better to use onCreateView, rather than onCreateDialog'.

  3. You don't have to subclass DialogFragment for most dialogs. To show a simple Dialog eg. asking the user a question of showing a little bit of information, you can instantiate a new Dialog() or use the DialogBuilder. I use DialogFragments only when there's some logic going on within the Dialog that I want to reside in it's own class and makes use of the DialogFragments lifecycle.

Upvotes: 1

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