DatePickerDialog - where are the buttons?

Question

I am writing an application which contains a DatePickerDialog and it does not show the negative/positive buttons.

Here is one demonstration of problem with a title and a message (which shows no buttons):

Screen 720x1280 / xhdpi ( WRONG: No buttons displayed )

This is the code which generates the picker:

        DatePickerDialog dpd = new DatePickerDialog(context, new DatePickerDialog.OnDateSetListener() {
            @Override
            public void onDateSet(DatePicker view, int year, int month, int dayOfMonth) {
                Calendar c = Calendar.getInstance();
                c.set(Calendar.YEAR, year);
                c.set(Calendar.MONTH, month);
                c.set(Calendar.DAY_OF_MONTH, dayOfMonth);
                Log.i(TAG,"onDateSet");
                readingDateTv.setText(MainActivity.sdf.format(c.getTime()));
                readingDateTv.setBackgroundColor(Color.argb(0x80, 0xff, 0x99, 0x99));
                notifyListeners();
            }
        }, c.get(Calendar.YEAR), c.get(Calendar.MONTH), c.get(Calendar.DAY_OF_MONTH));

        dpd.setTitle("Reading");
        dpd.setMessage("Enter Reading Date");
        dpd.show();

This appears to be an issue with screen sizes, the DatePickerDialog layout and specifically the message field. So the general question: is this a bug with the DatePickerDialog.

Answer 1

As this question and investigation has evolved it becomes obvious this is a screen size issue with the DatePickerDialog and in particular how the message field is handled in layout. (The message field should appear as a subtitle (smaller font than title and under the title).

I include various screen results (from emulators) to demonstrate the problem.

Screen 720x1280 / xhdpi ( WRONG: No buttons displayed )

This is the code which generates the picker:

        DatePickerDialog dpd = new DatePickerDialog(context, new DatePickerDialog.OnDateSetListener() {
            @Override
            public void onDateSet(DatePicker view, int year, int month, int dayOfMonth) {
                Calendar c = Calendar.getInstance();
                c.set(Calendar.YEAR, year);
                c.set(Calendar.MONTH, month);
                c.set(Calendar.DAY_OF_MONTH, dayOfMonth);
                Log.i(TAG,"onDateSet");
                readingDateTv.setText(MainActivity.sdf.format(c.getTime()));
                readingDateTv.setBackgroundColor(Color.argb(0x80, 0xff, 0x99, 0x99));
                notifyListeners();
            }
        }, c.get(Calendar.YEAR), c.get(Calendar.MONTH), c.get(Calendar.DAY_OF_MONTH));

        dpd.setTitle("Reading");
        dpd.setMessage("Enter Reading Date");
        dpd.show();

The above images are from an emulated Galaxy Nexus API 25 sw320dp. When I run the app on an emulated Nexus 7 API 25 sw600dp it appears fine :

Screen 1200x1920 / xhdpi ( CORRECT )

---

I then created a ldpi emulator (120dp density and 240x400 screen size) to see how it handles what is considered the extreme low end of screen size and densities.

The results are below and show that, when no message is defined for the dialog, a scroll bar exists and buttons - but when a message is defined a scroll bar exists and no buttons.

Screen 240x400 / mdpi

( [LEFT - no message] CORRECT ) ( [RIGHT - with message] WRONG no buttons )

So my conclusion is this is a bug with the layout of DatePickerDialog for small screens with a message. And so the solution for me is not use the message attribute.

For cases where a message is required and it is required to handle small screen sizes, then a custom layout for a custom date picker dialog is likely the only option.