Setting Margins for EditText in AlertDialog

Question

I've created an AlertDialog with an EditText in my Android app, but the default margins look really off. I've tried to specify margins as follows:

  android.support.v7.app.AlertDialog.Builder builder =  new android.support.v7.app.AlertDialog.Builder(SpinActivity.this);
            builder.setTitle("Edit Spin Tags");
            builder.setMessage("(separate tags with commas)");

            // set input
            int margin = 10;
            final EditText input = new EditText(SpinActivity.this);
            input.setSingleLine();
            input.setText(spinTags.toString().replace("[", "").replace("]", ""));
            builder.setView(input, margin, 0, margin, 0);

However, from the image below, you can see that it is not applying the desired effect.

Other options I've tried including placing the input in a LinearLayout and setting the margins using LayoutParams before setting the AlertDialog view to the LinearLayout.

How do I set the margins for an EditText in an AlertDialog?

Answer 1

Actually your solution is working perfectly, except that builder.setView(input, margin, 0, margin, 0); takes arguments in "pixel" values. So a value of 20 is very small. Either use a higher value for margin e.g. in the 100s. or use this function to convert from dp to pixels

public static int dpToPx(int dp)
{
    return (int) (dp * Resources.getSystem().getDisplayMetrics().density);
}

and then,

int margin = dpToPx(20);

Answer 2

You can have a LinearLayout as parent of the EditText. Then provide the margin to the EditText.

private void createDialog() {
    AlertDialog.Builder builder = new AlertDialog.Builder(this);
    builder.setTitle("Demo");
    builder.setMessage("Some demo message");
    LinearLayout parentLayout = new LinearLayout(this);
    EditText editText = new EditText(this);
    editText.setHint("Some text");
    LinearLayout.LayoutParams layoutParams = new LinearLayout.LayoutParams(
            LinearLayout.LayoutParams.MATCH_PARENT,
            LinearLayout.LayoutParams.MATCH_PARENT);

    // call the dimen resource having value in dp: 16dp
    int left = getPixelValue((int)getResources().getDimension(R.dimen.activity_horizontal_margin));
    int top = getPixelValue((int)getResources().getDimension(R.dimen.activity_horizontal_margin));
    int right = getPixelValue((int)getResources().getDimension(R.dimen.activity_horizontal_margin));
    int bottom = getPixelValue((int)getResources().getDimension(R.dimen.activity_horizontal_margin));

    // this will set the margins
    layoutParams.setMargins(left, top, right, bottom);

    editText.setLayoutParams(layoutParams);
    parentLayout.addView(editText);
    builder.setView(parentLayout);
    builder.setPositiveButton("OK", null);
    builder.create().show();
}

private int getPixelValue(int dp) {
    Resources resources = getResources();
    return (int) TypedValue.applyDimension(TypedValue.COMPLEX_UNIT_DIP,
            dp, resources.getDisplayMetrics());
}

For more you can visit http://www.pcsalt.com/android/set-margins-in-dp-programmatically-android/