How to make my activity transparent?

I am making a keyboard ( InputMethodService ), which needs to launch a dialog.

As I found out, a service can not launch a dialog. So I made a separate activity which is called from the service by

                Intent dialogIntent = new Intent(getBaseContext(), dialog.class)开发者_JAVA技巧;
                dialogIntent.addFlags(Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK);
                getApplication().startActivity(dialogIntent);

and show a dialog. The problem is that this activity replaces the previous one, where the user was typing something.

What do you think would be the best way to make it "transparent" ( i.e. not to push away the previous activity ) and also what would be the best way for this activity to talk back to the service, saying that dialog option was picked.

Thanks! :)

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If this is an Activity (not a Dialog), you can add a dialog theme in the activity section of your AndroidManifest:

android:theme="@android:style/Theme.Dialog"

As for getting back what the user pressed, you should use startActivityForResult(...)

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You should NOT launch an activity from an IME. This is a huge break in the IME flow -- the activity comes along and does an app switch from the current app, taking focus from it, and breaking your connection with its current editor.

Also there is no way to get a result back from it, because you can only use startActivityForResult() from an activity.

To show a Dialog in your IME, just use Dialog.getWindow().setType(WindowManager.LayoutParams.TYPE_INPUT_METHOD_DIALOG before showing the dialog.

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To resume in code what have been said, let me share some code for those who need to test the solution:

// 1. CREATE THE DIALOG
val builder: AlertDialog.Builder = AlertDialog.Builder(this, R.style.Theme_AppCompat_Light)
builder.setTitle("Title").setMessage("This is the message for the user. ")
val mDialog = builder.create()

// 2. SET THE IME WINDOW TOKEN ATTRIBUTE WITH THE TOKEN OF THE KEYBOARD VIEW 
mDialog.window?.attributes?.token = this.mKeyboardView.windowToken

// 3. SET THE TYPE OF THE DIALOG TO TYPE_APPLICATION_ATTACHED_DIALOG
mDialog.window?.setType(WindowManager.LayoutParams.TYPE_APPLICATION_ATTACHED_DIALOG)

// 4. SHOW THE DIALOG 
mDialog.show()