The tutorial is probably outdated, attempting to create an activity-based UI instead of the fragment-based UI preferred by wizard-generated code.
The view is in the fragment layout (
fragment_main.xml) and not in the activity layout (activity_main.xml). onCreate() is too early in the lifecycle to find it in the activity view hierarchy, and a null is returned. Invoking a method on null causes the NPE.
The preferred solution is to move the code to the fragment
onCreateView(), calling findViewById() on the inflated fragment layout rootView:@Override
public View onCreateView(LayoutInflater inflater, ViewGroup container,
Bundle savedInstanceState) {
View rootView = inflater.inflate(R.layout.fragment_main, container,
false);
View something = rootView.findViewById(R.id.something); // not activity findViewById()
something.setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener() { ... });
return rootView;
}
As a side note, the fragment layout will eventually be a part of the activity view hierarchy and discoverable with activity
findViewById() but only after the fragment transaction has been run. Pending fragment transactions get executed in super.onStart() after onCreate().