Android: EditText in Dialog doesn't pull up soft keyboard

OK, so after reading a lot, I have figured out why this is a problem, and I do not need to use any workarounds.

The problem seems to be (at least in my case), that since the place where you enter text is hidden initially (or nested or something), AlertDialog is automatically setting the flag WindowManager.LayoutParams.FLAG_ALT_FOCUSABLE_IM (or some combination of that and WindowManager.LayoutParams.FLAG_NOT_FOCUSABLE) so that things don't trigger a soft input to show up.

The way that I've found to fix this is to add the following line after the dialog has been created:

dialog.getWindow().clearFlags(WindowManager.LayoutParams.FLAG_NOT_FOCUSABLE|WindowManager.LayoutParams.FLAG_ALT_FOCUSABLE_IM);

Once this is done, the EditText acts like a normal EditText, no kludges or workarounds necessary.

If you read the AlertDialog documentation you'll find there:

The AlertDialog class takes care of automatically setting *WindowManager.LayoutParams.FLAG_ALT_FOCUSABLE_IM* for you based on whether any views in the dialog return true from View.onCheckIsTextEditor(). Generally you want this set for a Dialog without text editors, so that it will be placed on top of the current input method UI. You can modify this behavior by forcing the flag to your desired mode after calling onCreate.

I had the problem you've mentioned with EditText in ListView inside a Dialog. I fixed it by overwriting the custom view class (in my case ListView) with my own FocusableListView, with just one method overwritten:

public class FocusableListView extends ListView {

    public FocusableListView(Context context) {
        super(context);
    }

    public FocusableListView(Context context, AttributeSet attrs) {
        super(context, attrs);
    }

    public FocusableListView(Context context, AttributeSet attrs, int defStyle) {
        super(context, attrs, defStyle);
    }

    @Override
    public boolean onCheckIsTextEditor() {
        // this is where the magic happens
        return true;
    }
}

Then I'm using it in the layout file as:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<com.myexample.wiget.FocusableListView 
xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:descendantFocusability="beforeDescendants"
android:layout_height="wrap_content" />

You can overwrite the RelativeLayout in your case the same way and it should work.

I have the same problem in my own app. If you are developing for API level >= 8 you can use this snippet:

dialog.setOnShowListener(new OnShowListener() {
    @Override
     public void onShow(DialogInterface dialog) {
         InputMethodManager imm = (InputMethodManager) getSystemService(Context.INPUT_METHOD_SERVICE);
         imm.showSoftInput(textEdit, InputMethodManager.SHOW_IMPLICIT);
    }
});

I haven't found a solution for lower API levels...

BTW: This snippet doesn't always work on emulator. I don't know why.