I'd like to use a custom dialog built over an AlterDialog to obtain login info from the user. In this manner I first use the layoutinflater to get the layout and then put it in the AlertDialog.Builder.setView() method.

LayoutInflater inflater = (LayoutInflater) Home.this.getSystemService(LAYOUT_INFLATER_SERVICE);
layoutLogin = inflater.inflate(R.layout.login,(ViewGroup) findViewById(R.id.rl));

My layout consists of two textview and two editext for username and password respectively. Then I override the onCreateDialog method, checking the dialog id and putting all together, during the building phase I use the setButton(...) method to add a confirmation Button, neutral though:

/* (non-Javadoc)
 * @see android.app.Activity#onCreateDialog(int)
 */
@Override
protected Dialog onCreateDialog(int id) {
    AlertDialog d = null;
    AlertDialog.Builder builder = new AlertDialog.Builder(this);

    switch(id){
    ...
    case Home.DIALOG_LOGIN:
        builder.setView(layoutLogin);
        builder.setMessage("Sign in to your DyCaPo Account").setCancelable(false);
        d=builder.create();
        d.setTitle("Login");
        Message msg = new Message();
        msg.setTarget(Home.this.handleLogin);
        d.setButton(Dialog.BUTTON_NEUTRAL,"Sign in",msg);
        break;
    ...
    }

    return d;
}

Then I setup the Handler handleLogin:

private Handler handleLogin= new Handler(){

    /* (non-Javadoc)
     * @see android.os.Handler#handleMessage(android.os.Message)
     */
    @Override
    public void handleMessage(Message msg) {
        String input = usernameInput.getText().toString(); //this should hold the EditText field for the username
    }

};

which is just a stub up to now. what I don't get is when and where I have to access the two fields since I tried to save a reference to them but unfortunately I always get a null pointer exception. Can anyone tell me what I do wrong and give some guidelines to work with custom dialogs. Thanks in advance! :)