How can I access views in activities within a TabActivity?

Question

I've got a TabActivity containing other activities intended to split up a form. The TabActivity has in its layout a button intended to collect the data from all the form-related views across all the activities contained within the TabActivity and store it. The problem I'm running into is that the TabActivity doesn't appear to have access to these views; when I call findViewById() with one of them, I get a NullPointerException.

The documentation seems sparse about exactly how TabActivity works with respect to controlling the activities it contains. If it destroys an activity when switching from it to a different one, the situation I'm in would make sense. I'd like to know the best approach for accomplishing the goal described above.

src/com/vendor/MyTabActivity.java:

public class MyTabActivity extends TabActivity {
    @Override
    public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        setContentView(R.layout.my_tab_activity);
        final Button saveButton = (Button) findViewById(R.id.save_button);
        saveButton.setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener() {
            public void onClick(View v) {
                // NullPointerException happens here
                String fieldValue = ((TextView) findViewById(R.id.text_field)).getText().toString();
            }
        });
    }
}

res/layout/my_tab_activity.xml:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<TabHost xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    android:id="@android:id/tabhost">
    <LinearLayout>
        <TabWidget android:id="@android:id/tabs"/>
        <FrameLayout android:id="@android:id/tabcontent" />
        <Button android:id="@+id/save_button"/>
    </LinearLayout>
</TabHost>

src/com/vendor/NestedActivity.java:

public class NestedActivity extends Activity {  
    @Override
    public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        setContentView(R.layout.nested_activity);
    }
}

res/layout/nested_activity.xml:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<ScrollView xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">  
    <RelativeLayout>
        <EditText android:id="@+id/text_field"/>
    </RelativeLayout>
</ScrollView>

Answer 1

Your problem comes from these two lines in MyTabActivity...

setContentView(R.layout.my_tab_activity);

...and...

String fieldValue = ((TextView) findViewById(R.id.text_field)).getText().toString();

...although you obviously know the findViewById(R.id.text_field) is what's causing it.

Using findViewById(...) only works when trying to access UI elements which have been inflated as part of your current Activity. As there isn't a TextView with the resource id of R.id.text_field in the my_tab_activity.xml, it's never going to work.

Accessing activities which are tab content from the TabHost / TabActivity is tricky. My suggestion would be to use SharedPreferences which can be accessed from everywhere in your app. Once a TextView (or any other user-input item) is changed, save it to a SharedPreferences using a 'key' which identifies which activity/tab it came from. From then on, the TabActivity can collate the data easily.

Answer 2

You can get a reference to activities running inside of the tab activity using getLocalActivityManager() or getCurrentActivity(). For the activity object you get back you can do activity.findViewById() to get a reference to a view inside of the specific activity. But to point out TabActivity has been deprecated and you should be using Fragments to do what you are looking for. If you are targeting a version of Android earlier than 3.0 you can use the compatibility library to access fragments.