Selection alerts

Sometimes we have to ask the user to select one or more items from a larger collection. This may be necessary as normal dialogs only have up to three buttons, but a fully customized UI is unnecessary.

How to do it...

To provide a list of items in a dialog, we can specify the items in much the same way as a simple message:

1. If we need to provide the user with a selection of items in a dialog, we can also use the AlertDialog instance and the SetItems() method:

   string[] items = new string[] { ... }
   using (var dialog = new AlertDialog.Builder(this)) {
     dialog.SetTitle("Alert Title");
     dialog.SetPositiveButton("Close", delegate { 
     });
     dialog.SetItems(items, (s, e) => {
       int index = e.Which;
     });
     dialog.Show();
   } 

2. We can also use data adapters in a dialog, through the SetAdapter() method:

   var adapter = new ArrayAdapter(
     this, Android.Resource.Layout.SimpleListItem1, items);
   dialog.SetAdapter(adapter, (s, e) => {
     var index = e.Which;
   });

3. If we want to support a single...