title: How to change dialog background color programmatically?
body: <p>I have a main activity where users can change (via preferences) the background colour to their favourite colour.  My problem is that I can not change the background colour of of any custom  dialogs.</p>
  
  <p>Other answers in stack overflow suggest:</p>
  
  <p>(a) <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4386403/how-to-change-the-color-of-dialog-box">overiding the default theme</a> to the preferred colour.  I don't think is a suitable solution in this case as I know changing themes at run time is not recommended.</p>
  
  <p>(b) <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2017777/change-color-of-window-frame">Changing in styles.xml</a> (not suitable in this case as I can't change at run time)</p>
  
  <p>(c) <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2017777/change-color-of-window-frame">Overriding the AlertBuilder class</a> (but this tints the whole alert dialog)</p>
  
  <p>This closest I have come to changing the colour is removing the alert builder title,  and setting the custom view's background to the favourite colour (eg.pink).  Unfortunately this gives an  ugly strip at the top and bottom of the dialog.</p>
  
  <p>Code is included after image,  suggestions about how to change dialog background would be greatly appreciated.</p>
  
  <p><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/mLwJ4.jpg" alt="Dialog appearance"></p>
  
  <p><strong><em>Code for the default appearance</em></strong></p>
  
  <pre><code>protected Dialog onCreateDialog(int dialogId) {
      LayoutInflater inflater = (LayoutInflater) getSystemService(Context.LAYOUT_INFLATER_SERVICE);
      final AlertDialog.Builder builder = new AlertDialog.Builder(this);
  
  
          final View viewMessEdit = inflater.inflate(R.layout.example,(ViewGroup) findViewById(R.id.dialog_mess_edit_root));
                builder.setView(viewMessEdit);
          builder.setTitle("Alert builder's title");
  }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p><strong><em>Code for changing the custom dialog views background colour (and the Alert builder's title is removed)</em></strong></p>
  
  <pre><code>protected Dialog onCreateDialog(int dialogId) {
      LayoutInflater inflater = (LayoutInflater) getSystemService(Context.LAYOUT_INFLATER_SERVICE);
      final AlertDialog.Builder builder = new AlertDialog.Builder(this);
  
  
          final View viewMessEdit = inflater.inflate(R.layout.example,(ViewGroup) findViewById(R.id.dialog_mess_edit_root));
                builder.setView(viewMessEdit);
                viewMessEdit.setBackgroundResource(R.color.pink_dark);
  
  }
  </code></pre>