How can I get clickable hyperlinks in AlertDialog from a string resource?

Question

What I am trying to accomplish is to have clickable hyperlinks in the message text displayed by an AlertDialog. While the AlertDialog implementation happily underlines and colors any hyperlinks (defined using <a href="..."> in the string resource passed to Builder.setMessage) supplied the links do not become clickable.

The code I am currently using looks like this:

new AlertDialog.Builder(MainActivity.this).setTitle(
        R.string.Title_About).setMessage(
        getResources().getText(R.string.about))
        .setPositiveButton(android.R.string.ok, null)
        .setIcon(R.drawable.icon).show();

I'd like to avoid using a WebView to just display a text snippet.

Answer 1

If you are only showing some text and URL[s] in your dialog perhaps the solution is simpler

public static class MyOtherAlertDialog {

 public static AlertDialog create(Context context) {
  final TextView message = new TextView(context);
  // i.e.: R.string.dialog_message =>
            // "Test this dialog following the link to dtmilano.blogspot.com"
  final SpannableString s = 
               new SpannableString(context.getText(R.string.dialog_message));
  Linkify.addLinks(s, Linkify.WEB_URLS);
  message.setText(s);
  message.setMovementMethod(LinkMovementMethod.getInstance());

  return new AlertDialog.Builder(context)
   .setTitle(R.string.dialog_title)
   .setCancelable(true)
   .setIcon(android.R.drawable.ic_dialog_info)
   .setPositiveButton(R.string.dialog_action_dismiss, null)
   .setView(message)
   .create();
 }
}

As shown here http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/up29wTQeK_zuz-LLvre9wQ?feat=directlink

Answer 2

I didn't really like the currently most popular answer because it significantly changes the formatting of the message in the dialog.

Here's a solution that will linkify your dialog text without otherwise changing the text styling:

    // Linkify the message
    final SpannableString s = new SpannableString(msg);
    Linkify.addLinks(s, Linkify.ALL);

    final AlertDialog d = new AlertDialog.Builder(activity)
        .setPositiveButton(android.R.string.ok, null)
        .setIcon(R.drawable.icon)
        .setMessage( s )
        .create();

    d.show();

    // Make the textview clickable. Must be called after show()
    ((TextView)d.findViewById(android.R.id.message)).setMovementMethod(LinkMovementMethod.getInstance());

Answer 3

This should make <a href> tags to get highlighted as well. Please note that i have just added a few lines to emmby's code. so credit to him

final AlertDialog d = new AlertDialog.Builder(this)
 .setPositiveButton(android.R.string.ok, null)
 .setIcon(R.drawable.icon)
 .setMessage(Html.fromHtml("<a href=\"http://www.google.com\">Check this link out</a>"))
 .create();
d.show();
// Make the textview clickable. Must be called after show()   
    ((TextView)d.findViewById(android.R.id.message)).setMovementMethod(LinkMovementMethod.getInstance());

Answer 4

Actually, if you want to simply use a string without dealing with all the views, the fastest way is to find message textview and linkify it:

d.setMessage("Insert your cool string with links and stuff here");
Linkify.addLinks((TextView) d.findViewById(android.R.id.message), Linkify.ALL);

Answer 5

JFTR, here comes the solution which I figured out after some time:

View view = View.inflate(MainActivity.this, R.layout.about, null);
TextView textView = (TextView) view.findViewById(R.id.message);
textView.setMovementMethod(LinkMovementMethod.getInstance());
textView.setText(R.string.Text_About);
new AlertDialog.Builder(MainActivity.this).setTitle(
        R.string.Title_About).setView(view)
        .setPositiveButton(android.R.string.ok, null)
        .setIcon(R.drawable.icon).show();

The corresponding about.xml borrowed as a fragment from the Android sources looks like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<ScrollView xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    android:id="@+id/scrollView" android:layout_width="fill_parent"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:paddingTop="2dip"
    android:paddingBottom="12dip" android:paddingLeft="14dip"
    android:paddingRight="10dip">
    <TextView android:id="@+id/message" style="?android:attr/textAppearanceMedium"
        android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:padding="5dip" android:linksClickable="true" />
</ScrollView>

The important parts are setting linksClickable to true and setMovementMethod(LinkMovementMethod.getInstance()).

Answer 6

Instead of ...

AlertDialog.Builder dialogBuilder = new AlertDialog.Builder(this);
dialogBuilder.setTitle(R.string.my_title);
dialogBuilder.setMessage(R.string.my_text);

... I now use:

AlertDialog.Builder dialogBuilder = new AlertDialog.Builder(this);
dialogBuilder.setTitle(R.string.my_title);
TextView textView = new TextView(this);
textView.setMovementMethod(LinkMovementMethod.getInstance());
textView.setText(R.string.my_text);
dialogBuilder.setView(textView);

Answer 7

All the above answer will not remove html tag like , etc if the given string contains, I tried to remove all the tags, and this is work fine for me

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

        LayoutInflater inflater = (LayoutInflater) ctx.getSystemService(LAYOUT_INFLATER_SERVICE);
        View layout = inflater.inflate(R.layout.custom_dialog, null);

        TextView text = (TextView) layout.findViewById(R.id.text);
        text.setMovementMethod(LinkMovementMethod.getInstance());
        text.setText(Html.fromHtml("<b>Hello World</b> This is a test of the URL <a href=http://www.example.com> Example</a><p><b>This text is bold</b></p><p><em>This text is emphasized</em></p><p><code>This is computer output</code></p><p>This is<sub> subscript</sub> and <sup>superscript</sup></p>";));
        builder.setView(layout);
AlertDialog alert = builder.show();

and the custom_dialog would be like;

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
              android:id="@+id/layout_root"
              android:orientation="horizontal"
              android:layout_width="fill_parent"
              android:layout_height="fill_parent"
              android:padding="10dp"
              >

    <TextView android:id="@+id/text"
              android:layout_width="wrap_content"
              android:layout_height="fill_parent"
              android:textColor="#FFF"
              />
</LinearLayout>

The above code will remove all the html tag and shows Example as Click able URL all others in the specified html formatting text.

Answer 8

I was not really satisfied with the current answers. There are two things that are important when you want clickable hyperlinks in href style withing an AlertDialog:

1. Set the content as View and not with setMessage(…), as only Views allow clickable HTML content
2. Set the correct movement method (setMovementMethod(…))

Here is a working minimal example:

strings.xml

<string name="dialogContent">
    Cool Links:\n
    <a href="http://stackoverflow.com">Stackoverflow</a>\n
    <a href="http://android.stackexchange.com">Android Enthusiasts</a>\n
</string>

MyActivity.java

…
public void showCoolLinks(View view) {
   final TextView textView = new TextView(this);
   textView.setText(R.string.dialogContent);
   textview.setMovementMethod(LinkMovementMethod.getInstance()); // this is important to make the links clickable
   final AlertDialog alertDialog = new AlertDialog.Builder(this)
       .setPositivebutton("OK", null)
       .setView(textView)
       .create();
   alertDialog.show()
}
…

Answer 9

Simplest way:

final AlertDialog dlg = new AlertDialog.Builder(this)
                .setTitle(R.string.title)
                .setMessage(R.string.message)
                .setNeutralButton(R.string.close_button, null)
                .create();
        dlg.show();
        // Important! android.R.id.message will be available ONLY AFTER show()
        ((TextView)dlg.findViewById(android.R.id.message)).setMovementMethod(LinkMovementMethod.getInstance());

Answer 10

I've checked many questions and answers, but it doesn't work. I did it myself. This is the code snippet on MainActivity.java.

private void skipToSplashActivity()
{

    final TextView textView = new TextView(this);
    final SpannableString str = new SpannableString(this.getText(R.string.dialog_message));

    textView.setText(str);
    textView.setMovementMethod(LinkMovementMethod.getInstance());

    ....
}

Put this tag on res\values\String.xml

<string name="dialog_message"><a href="http://www.nhk.or.jp/privacy/english/">NHK Policy on Protection of Personal Information</a></string>

Answer 11

I combined some of the options discussed above to come up with this function that works for me. pass the result to dialog builder's SetView() method.

public ScrollView LinkifyText(String message) 
{
    ScrollView svMessage = new ScrollView(this); 
    TextView tvMessage = new TextView(this);

    SpannableString spanText = new SpannableString(message);

    Linkify.addLinks(spanText, Linkify.ALL);
    tvMessage.setText(spanText);
    tvMessage.setMovementMethod(LinkMovementMethod.getInstance());

    svMessage.setPadding(14, 2, 10, 12);
    svMessage.addView(tvMessage);

    return svMessage;
}

Answer 12

If you are using a DialogFragment, this solution should help.

public class MyDialogFragment extends DialogFragment {
    @Override
    public Dialog onCreateDialog(Bundle savedInstanceState) {

        // dialog_text contains "This is a http://test.org/"
        String msg = getResources().getString(R.string.dialog_text);
        SpannableString spanMsg = new SpannableString(msg);
        Linkify.addLinks(spanMsg, Linkify.ALL);

        AlertDialog.Builder builder = new AlertDialog.Builder(getActivity());
        builder.setTitle(R.string.dialog_title)
            .setMessage(spanMsg)
            .setPositiveButton(R.string.ok, null);
        return builder.create();
    }

    @Override
    public void onStart() {
        super.onStart();

        // Make the dialog's TextView clickable
        ((TextView)this.getDialog().findViewById(android.R.id.message))
                .setMovementMethod(LinkMovementMethod.getInstance());
    }
}

Answer 13

I do this by specifying the alert box in an XML resource and loading that. See for example the about.xml (see the ABOUT_URL id) that gets instantiated near the end of ChandlerQE.java. The relevant parts from the java code:

LayoutInflater inflater = 
    (LayoutInflater)getSystemService(Context.LAYOUT_INFLATER_SERVICE);
View view = (View) inflater.inflate(R.layout.about, null);

new AlertDialog.Builder(ChandlerQE.this)
.setTitle(R.string.about)
.setView(view)

Answer 14

This is my solution. It creates a normal link without html tags involved and without any URL visible. It also keeps the design intact.

SpannableString s = new SpannableString("This is my link.");
s.setSpan(new URLSpan("http://www.google.com"), 11, 15, Spanned.SPAN_EXCLUSIVE_EXCLUSIVE);

AlertDialog.Builder builder;
if (Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= Build.VERSION_CODES.LOLLIPOP) {
    builder = new AlertDialog.Builder(this, android.R.style.Theme_Material_Dialog_Alert);
} else {
    builder = new AlertDialog.Builder(this);
}

final AlertDialog d = builder
        .setPositiveButton("CLOSE", new DialogInterface.OnClickListener() {
            public void onClick(DialogInterface dialog, int which) {
                // Do nothing, just close
            }
        })
        .setNegativeButton("SHARE", new DialogInterface.OnClickListener() {
            public void onClick(DialogInterface dialog, int which) {
                // Share the app
                share("Subject", "Text");
            }
        })
        .setIcon(R.drawable.photo_profile)
        .setMessage(s)
        .setTitle(R.string.about_title)
        .create();

d.show();

((TextView)d.findViewById(android.R.id.message)).setMovementMethod(LinkMovementMethod.getInstance());