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Android Build a Simple Android App (2014) Basic Android Programming Accessing Views in Code

Herschel Greenspan
Herschel Greenspan
890 Points
Posted by Herschel Greenspan
Herschel Greenspan
890 Points

How do i fix this line of code? I am completely lost.

Here is the code:

// declare our view variables and assign them the views form the layout file TextView factLabel= (TextView)findViewById(R.id.factTextView); Button showFactButton;

1 Answer

Iain Diamond
Iain Diamond
29,379 Points
Iain Diamond
Iain Diamond
29,379 Points 
TextView factLabel = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.factTextView);

Let's start by explaining the factLabel.

Somewhere in the activity is a text view with an id of factTextView. If you want to change label text we need to refer to it in code somehow. All the activity items are stored in a computer generated file known as 'R'. So, this means the fact text can be reached using R.id.factTextView. The method that does this is the findViewById. The value this method returns is stored in the factLabel variable which is of type TextView, which unfortunately doesn't match the output from findViewById so we need to change the output type by using type conversion. This is what the '(TextView)' before the function call is doing.

So to do the same for the Button showFactButton, well, the question says it has the id of showFactButton. This means its id will be R.id.showFactButton. We plug this into the method, remembering that we want something of type Button, which gives the final result of:

Button showFactButton = (Button) findViewById(R.id.showFactButton)

Hope this makes sense. iain