How to reference other views in Anko DSL?

Question

I'm using Anko in my Android project, but I don't know how can it reference the child views I created in the DSL when the referenced view is not at the same level where I reference it.

The following code works:

alert {
    customView {
        val input = textInputLayout {
            editText {
                hint = "Name"
                textColor =resources.getColor(R.color.highlight)
            }
        }


        positiveButton("OK") { "${input.editText.text}" }
    }
}.show()

but the following code does not work:

alert {
    customView {
        val vertical = verticalLayout {
            textView {
                text = "Edit device name"
                textColor = resources.getColor(R.color.highlight)
                textSize = 24F
            }
            val input = textInputLayout {
                editText {
                    hint = "Name"
                    textColor = resources.getColor(R.color.highlight)
                }
            }
        }

        positiveButton("OK") { "${vertical.input.editText.text}" }  // Cannot resolve "input"
    }
}.show()

Answer 1

As I see it there are two ways. The super hacky way would be to declare the positive button within the textInputLayout block. This is possible because you can access all outer scopes from within any nested scope and the positiveButton method is declared in the alert scope:

alert {
    customView {
        verticalLayout {
            textInputLayout {
                val editText = editText {
                    hint = "Name"
                }

                positiveButton("OK") { toast("${editText.text}") }
            }
        }
    }
}.show()

The less hacky way would be to declare a variable that can be accessed from both scopes. However you would need to make it nullable since you can't initialize it immediately:

alert {
    var editText: EditText? = null

    customView {
        verticalLayout {
            textInputLayout {
                editText = editText {
                    hint = "Name"
                }
            }
        }
    }

    positiveButton("OK") { toast("${editText!!.text}") } 
}.show()