How can I get clickable hyperlinks in AlertDialog

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

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 2

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 3

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 4

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 5

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 6

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