TextView.setText (Android) is causing crashes.. any idea why?

Question

Trying to get started with Android development, and doing some basic work with TextViews..

For some reason TextView's setText() method is causing huge problems for me.. here's a simplified version of my code to show what I mean:

package com.example.testapp;

import android.os.Bundle;
import android.app.Activity;
import android.widget.TextView;

public class MainActivity extends Activity {

    TextView text;

    @Override
    protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        text = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.text1);  
        setContentView(R.layout.activity_main);
        text.setText("literally anything");
    }
}

This will cause a crash, and I don't understand why.. if I create the TextView within the onCreate it works just fine, but if I create it outside of it, it doesn't.. why is that? Has the line "TextView text;" not been executed yet or something?

Thanks!

Answer 1

You need to call setContentView() before initializing the TextView so that your Activity has access to all the layout components.

setContentView(R.layout.activity_main);
text = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.text1);  

text.setText("literally anything");