Android DialogFragment disappears after orientation change

Question

I have a FragmentActivity support v4 class which implements two side by side (kind of like gmail) fragments and a button which can bring up a DialogFragment.

This all works great unless I have an orientation change. When I have an orientation change the states of the Fragments are not saved.

And the main problem is if I have a the FragmentDialog open, it simply disappears.

I have set setRetainInstance(true); in all fragments but it did not help.

In my manifest I included android:configChanges="orientation" but is still does not help.

Here are my code samples, thank you for the help.

public class AddMasterDialog extends DialogFragment {      private int mTitle;     private int mPrompt;     private OnClickListener onSaveListener;     private OnClickListener onCancelListener;      public AddMasterDialog newInstance(int title, int prompt) {         AddMasterDialog simpleDialog = new AddMasterDialog(title, prompt);         return simpleDialog;     }      public AddMasterDialog() {         // Empty constructor required for DialogFragment     }     public AddMasterDialog(int title, int prompt) {         // Empty constructor required for DialogFragment         mTitle = title;         mPrompt = prompt;     }     public void setSaveButton(OnClickListener save){         onSaveListener = save;     }     public void setCancelButton(OnClickListener cancel){         onCancelListener = cancel;     }     @Override     public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {         super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);         setRetainInstance(true);     }      @Override     public View onCreateView(LayoutInflater inflater, ViewGroup container,             Bundle savedInstanceState) {          //if(savedInstanceState == null){             View view = inflater.inflate(R.layout.add_new_simple, container);             getDialog().setTitle(mTitle);             ((TextView) view.findViewById(R.id.add_simple_new_value_prompt)).setText(mPrompt);              Button saveButton = (Button) view.findViewById(R.id.add_simple_save_button);             saveButton.setOnClickListener(onSaveListener);              //Cancel Button             Button cancelButton = (Button) view.findViewById(R.id.add_simple_cancel_button);             cancelButton.setOnClickListener(onCancelListener);             return view;         //}     } } 

and in my Main activity:

private void initiateAddMasterPopupWindow() {         try {             addMasterDialog = new AddMasterDialog(R.string.add_new_master_dialog_title, R.string.add_master_new_value_prompt);             addMasterDialog.setSaveButton(saveNewMasterClickListener);             addMasterDialog.setCancelButton(cancelNewMasterClickListener);             FragmentManager fm = getSupportFragmentManager();             addMasterDialog.show(fm, ADD_NEW_MASTER);          } catch (Exception e) {             e.printStackTrace();         }     } 

Answer 1

Okay, so the issue seems to be with the DialogFragment compatibility library.

The issue was described in this post.

"An obsolete DISMISS message for the fragment is retained in the message queue. It's been queued by DialogFragment.onDestroyView() when dismissing the old dialog and gets reactivated after creating the new dialog.

A quick (and possibly dirty) workaround is to override onDestroyView() and clear the dismiss listener before calling super.onDestroyView()"

Adding the following code to my DialogFragment solved the issue:

 @Override  public void onDestroyView() {      if (getDialog() != null && getRetainInstance()) {          getDialog().setDismissMessage(null);      }      super.onDestroyView();  } 

Answer 2

In the interest of the poor soul (Me) who has the same issue for different reasons, I'm going to post this. The dialog fragment should be preserved automatically as long as you do the following:

1. If you call an Activity onSaveInstanceState(), make sure you call the super function!!!!. In my case, that was the key. Also make sure you do the same thing in the Fragment.
2. If you use setRetainInstance, you will need to manually store off the values and re-apply them. Otherwise, you should be able to not worry about it, in most cases. If you're doing something a bit more complicated, you might need to setRetainInstance(true), but otherwise ignore it. In my case, I needed to use it to store a random seed for one of my classes, but otherwise I was okay.
3. Some people have complained about a bug in the support library, where a dismiss message is sent when it shouldn't be. The latest support library seems to have fixed that, so you shouldn't need to worry about that.

You shouldn't need to do anything fancy like manually store off the fragment, it should be done automatically if you follow these steps. Overall, this seems to do the trick for anyone with a more modern support library.