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I have created a custom dialog called MyCustomDialog which extends Dialog. I create and show my custom dialog as follows:

new MyCustomDialog(myContext).show();

I override the Dialog.onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) method to do my initialisation. I also check in this method whether a certain condition holds and, if not, I would like to dismiss/cancel my dialog. I have tried calling the cancel() and dismiss() methods in my dialog's onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) and onStart() methods but it has no effect.

Anyone know how to cancel or dismiss a dialog (from within the dialog) before it shows?

Adil Hussain
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2 Answers2

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You should place the logic to determine if the dialog is to be shown outside of the onCreate() method. it does not belong there.

Alternatively, rename your show() method showIfRequired() (or something), and add the conditional show logic there.

I know this doesn't technically answer your question, but what you are trying to do is not the correct design. That's a good thing, as doing in the right way is actually simpler.

Also, as a side note, you should using DialogFragment in favor of Dialog. it's available in the v4 support library.

Jeffrey Blattman
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This is for API levels 10 and below:

First you should override onCreateDialog(int id, Bundle args) in the Activity class, is that what you're doing? Dialogs are always created and displayed as part of the Activity. Second, I don't think you can cancel/dismiss a dialog in onCreateDialog because it hasn't actually been created when onCreateDialog is called. That is, you can't cancel/dismiss something that hasn't been created. What you can try is to override onPrepareDialog() instead and do your check to cancel/dismiss the dialog there. At that point the dialog should actually have been created (just not displayed), so you would be able to prevent it from getting displayed if you call cancel/dismiss there.

onPrepareDialog() is the proper place to do any sort of checks and decision making on the dialog that is about to be displayed. This is for APIs prior to Honeycomb.

This is for APIs 11 and later:

If you are using a later API, you should extend DialogFragment instead. In this case I think you can handle the decision making in onCreateView() method of DialogFragment which is similar to onPrepareDialog().

I hope you've read through this: http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/dialogs.html

or this, depending on your API:

http://developer.android.com/reference/android/app/DialogFragment.html

Overall, perhaps a cleaner solution is to disable the button or mechanism that causes the dialog to show up in the first place? That is, write you code such that Dialog.show() is called only when it really needs to be called. I'd have to know more details about what exactly you're trying to do. For example, say you call Dialog.show() from the onClickListener of a button. you don't really want the user to press a button, expect a dialog, but have it not show up due to some reason the user doesn't understand. A better solution would be to disable the button all together so that it's obvious to the user that this function isn't available due to something else in the application.

Andi Jay
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  • `onCreateDialog()` is a method in `DialogFragment`. he's not using `DialogFragment`, he's extending `Dialog`. – Jeffrey Blattman Jul 31 '12 at 16:27
  • The onCreateDialog that I'm talking about is a method of Activity actually. So is the onPrepareDialog() I'm talking about. It doesn't look like the OP is using DialogFragment. If this app is pre-honeycomb this is what the OP should be doing (Dialogfragment doesn't exist prior to Honeycomb). if it's for honeycomb and later, than the OP should be using DialogFragment. I added that comment to the original question. – Andi Jay Jul 31 '12 at 16:29