PreferenceActivity validating user input and showing error messages

Question

I am using a PreferenceActivity for user to define certain settings for the application.

I am also using the OnPreferenceChangeListener interface to get notifications of changed preferences, and within that callback, I can do validation of the user's input, and I can make decisions on updating on rejecting user's input.

When I detect a validation error, I would like to keep the preference editing dialog box active on the screen, so that I can use the .getTextEdit().setError() method to set an error message to inform the user. However, I wasn't able to manage to keep the dialog box active on the screen, since it seems like disappearing right before the OnPreferenceChangeListener callback gets executed.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

Well, there isn't an event for you to use BEFORE the user has finished has edit, as written in android dev:

The interface has only one callback method, onSharedPreferenceChanged()

What I would do is implement a custom preference, (as explained in http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/settings.html#Custom) But instead of extending DialogPreference i would extend EditTextPreference. Haven't tested it though, but sounds like it should work. Good luck :)