Welcome to the Treehouse Community

Want to collaborate on code errors? Have bugs you need feedback on? Looking for an extra set of eyes on your latest project? Get support with fellow developers, designers, and programmers of all backgrounds and skill levels here with the Treehouse Community! While you're at it, check out some resources Treehouse students have shared here.

Looking to learn something new?

Treehouse offers a seven day free trial for new students. Get access to thousands of hours of content and join thousands of Treehouse students and alumni in the community today.

Start your free trial

Android Build an Interactive Story App (Retired) User Input Getting Text from an EditText

Franco Pagliuso
Franco Pagliuso
633 Points

Getting Text from an Edit Text

what is going on at line private EditText mNameField:

No explanation is give in this video or previous videos on the track.

1 Answer

Jeff Wilton
Jeff Wilton
16,646 Points

That is a member variable which is used to temporarily store the value that the user enters into the name textbox in the app. After the start button is clicked, the value of the name textbox is reassigned to a String called "name" in the OnClickListener. For the sake of simplicity in this video, the name String is simply displayed as a Toast message.

Hope this helps!

Tommy Choe
Tommy Choe
38,156 Points

Hey guys, I just want to make it clear that the line that Franco is referring to simply declares the member variable so that all other properties and methods in the class can access it. The member variable itself is actually initialized in the onCreate method before the setOnClickListener method. It simply gets initialized with a reference to nameEditText as soon as the app is created. The value that the user enters in the nameEditText text field is not yet being stored at this point.